kintsugi
golden scars | pfp by sun
kaeru
Saffron’s fighting gym stood for centuries. Tsuru returns home in time for its fall.
“They can’t do this. It’s just not how it’s done.” Koichi punctuated each sentence with a jab of his untouched takoyaki skewer, splattering droplets of sauce on the wet pavement and launching the furthest one precariously closer to flying off the end. “Complete lack of respect for tradition, is what it is.”
“But Dad, that’s how gym succession works these days. If that’s how they’re doing it, that’s how it’s done,” Tsuru said wearily, adjusting the hood of his raincoat. That wasn’t entirely true, but it was also far too cold and far too late at night for pedantry. It seemed liked winter was coming early to Saffron this year, or he’d forgotten how readily its grey skies imparted sleet. Between the broken strap on his backpack, the sudden freezing downpour, and his father’s increasingly energetic rant about the gym, the half mile walk home from the train station may as well have been up the slopes of Mt. Moon. His own takoyaki and the warmth it brought was long gone.
“A Kurosawa has held Saffron’s gym for twelve generations. And the seat’s been for fighting-types since before gyms and the League were even a spurious thought in some smooth-handed desk jockey’s brain, Tsu,” Koichi huffed, and when he stepped over a puddle at the bottom of the crosswalk, Tsuru was struck by how stiff the movement was. “That’s got to count for something.”
But it doesn’t, Tsuru couldn’t bring himself to say, and the rain felt even colder. If it counted, this wouldn’t be happening. “Who’s the challenger?” he asked instead. His father always lightened up around battle strategy.
“Sabrina Natsume.” Koichi muttered the words so darkly they might’ve been an incantation.
The pokégear in Tsuru’s front pocket suddenly felt treacherously heavy. “The one who went to my primary school?”
His father grunted in affirmation.
Tsuru raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t been expecting to make much of a his father’s answer—spending eleven months of the year in Hoenn usually left him with casual, at best, familiarity with Kanto’s League standings—but everyone knew Sabrina. Type-specialists usually didn’t do well in the League, and few trainers had the skills to train more than one psychic-type. Sabrina did both. In the increasingly more technical modern League, most commentators agreed that simply raising more powerful pokémon no longer cut it—but no one could deny that Sabrina flew in the face of that assessment. The coolly confident young woman trouncing match after match on the television was unrecognizable from the quiet girl with an unflatteringly shaggy bowlcut scowling in the back row of first grade. Four pokémon, six months, eight badges. Last month ago, Tsuru had stayed up past the timezone differences to watch her almost effortless sweep of Champion Lance.
And that would’ve been all he knew. Except yesterday morning, Tsuru had received an innocuous text from a number he’d saved over ten years ago.
“The Natsume family has been in Saffron for some generations, so they should know better,” Koichi was saying when Tsuru zoned back into the conversation. “This simply isn’t how she’s supposed to go about it. Perhaps if she married in, then her children … I mean, you did write that poem for her sixth birthday ...”
Tsuru rolled his eyes. Barely half an hour into the visit and his father was already missing the forest for playing matchmaker. “When’s the challenge? There’s two days left, yeah?” They rounded the corner to his father’s block. It was like turning off a light switch—suddenly the street bustle seemed quieter and the city glow less bright, cushioned by the row of poplar trees lining the street.
Koichi turned to look at him, his cheeks gaunt and hollow in the yellow glow of the street lamp. “There won’t be one.”
“What?” A fighting monotype versus a psychic monotype was only ever going to go one way, even before factoring in what commentators loved to call the Sabrina Factor, but … “Why not?”
“The Champion is entitled to any lesser seat.” Koichi fumbled around with his uneaten takoyaki before handing it to Tsuru to search for his keys properly. “If she wants Saffron, it is her right.”
By then Koichi had rounded into the apartment stairwell. Koichi’s breathing, honed by years of rigor, remained unchanged, but the twelve flights of stairs left Tsuru gassed, and the conversation dwindled. Koichi opened the door and busied himself noisily shaking out his umbrella. Tsuru entered his father’s narrow apartment carefully, but there was no sudden flurry of movement preceding Matsu, his father’s poliwrath, rushing to greet—inspect, intimidate, call it what you would—late night visitors. Without him, the narrow apartment’s entryway, living room, and kitchen all felt crammed into one empty space, hemmed in by the dull rainfall outside.
“He’s at the gym,” Koichi said, noticing Tsuru’s hesitation. “Hasn’t left since we got the news.”
Tsuru nodded absently, though his eye was caught on the empty kitchen trashcan, which was normally filled with takeout containers.
Koichi followed Tsuru’s gaze and huffed. “I cleaned before you got here.”
Tsuru nodded absently, trying to make as little of a show as possible stepping over the pile of mail and newspapers on the doormat. SAFFRON GYM DYNASTY POISED TO FALL, the headline of a tabloid proclaimed in garish caps. “Guest room still on the left?” he asked, eyeing the two shut doors. The eleven hour time difference between Rustboro and Saffron meant he wasn’t even close to being tired, but it was nearly two in the morning, and Koichi was likely to be up before dawn.
Koichi grunted in affirmation, and added, gesturing behind the battered black sofa in the living room, “The heat lamps you got on rent from the pokécenter are behind there. Couldn’t fit them in your room. I turned them on for a few hours yesterday and they didn’t seem like they’d catch anything on fire.”
“Thanks.” Something about that sentence didn’t make sense, but Koichi had already unlaced his boots and was walking away. Tsuru patted around the side of his backpack for Cici’s pokéball, and realized he was still holding his father’s untouched takoyaki. “Did you want—”
The door on the right closed.
Tsuru exhaled through his teeth, and then began rummaging as quietly as possible through the kitchen cabinets for a plastic container for the takoyaki. He hadn’t expected anything about this trip to be easy, but that hadn’t stopped him from booking the eighteen hour, double-transfer train ride from Rustboro as soon as he’d heard. Sabrina really had the worst timing. He’d owe a few emails to his lab PI, and his friends had planned a trip up to the hot springs during midterm recess that he’d miss, and skipping lectures this close to midterms was going to mean grueling catch-up later, and—none of that could be helped now. He couldn’t let his father do this alone.
The last drawer rattled on its tracks and would’ve been too small for a container anyway—Tsuru had only checked out of habit. As usual, Koichi’s cabinets were meticulously organized and just short of barren. He settled for some aluminum foil, clumsily wrapping up the takoyaki into a lumpy, silvery slug. The fridge, stocked as sparsely as the rest of the kitchen, contained a bag of mayonnaise, half a jar of furikake, a squat jar of protein powder, and still-sealed box of Koko Ichiban curry puffs. Tsuru’s favorite. His father was probably keeping Matsu company sleeping at the gym. If he slept at all.
Tsuru closed the fridge door with a sigh and turned towards the living room, which was exactly as he remembered it: a coffee table and sofa facing a CRT television stacked on cinderblocks, all shoved into the corners to make room for a black standalone punching bag. Tsuru ran his fingers over the punching bag’s tattered vinyl, which was worn almost white just above his shoulder and at his navel—good to see both Matsu and Koichi embracing bachelor life. Did poliwrath even mate?
All of this was probably a matter for the morning. Tsuru unclipped Cici’s pokéball from his belt and thumbed the release mechanism. Its familiar flood of red light resolved into a lithe green figure who came up to just below Tsuru’s torso, trailed by a thick clubbed tail. The breloom blinked owlishly back at Tsuru from beneath the stout brim of her hat.
“We’re visiting my father in Saffron,” he explained in hushed tones. They’d talked about this before the journey, but she tended to struggle with concepts like areas geographically larger than Petalburg Woods, and off-season migration, and divided families, and ... “And Matsu.” Her eyes lit up faintly at the mention of her sparring partner. “You can sleep over there.”
Cici, who had already been drifting towards the dull red glow of the heat lamps, trundled around the sofa to inspect her temporary bed. It was dark outside, and she was a grass-type, so she yawned, flopped to the ground, and promptly fell asleep.
The light beneath Koichi’s door clicked off.
Tsuru bit back a sigh. He lingered by the living room window, tracing over the fuzzy silhouettes of Saffron’s skyline as the rain lightened to cold fog. Rustboro, which went quiet and dark by ten, almost as if enforced by curfew, had felt like a completely different world when he’d first moved there with Mom; now nine years later, it was Saffron that felt like an alien landscape, with dancing streetlights and glowing yellow skyscrapers looming out of neon-tinted fog.
But it was still home, even if it didn’t feel exactly as he remembered. He fished his pokégear out of his pocket, where his most recent message blinked, unanswered:
Idiot, Tsuru thought sourly. He should’ve known.
He checked on Cici one final time—the breloom was now snoring gently—and then scooped up his backpack and walked towards the guest room. The door only opened halfway, and once Tsuru wriggled inside and turned on the light, he was able to see why: short of the bed and a narrow path to the door, every inch of the room was filled. Stacks of cardboad boxes bulging with gloves and athletic tape, a tower of stiffly-starched karategi, and even a small forest of benches peppered with escrima sticks were piled atop what looked like four punching bags, their chains neatly coiled at their bases.
Tsuru sighed, picking his way across a tangle of belts that had fallen into the pathway, and slung his backpack around the neck and shoulders of a humanoid punching dummy. It was too late, or too early, to run the shower now. He flung himself onto the bed—firm as ever—still in his travel clothes, and stared at the ceiling. This explained Koichi’s comments about not having space for Cici’s heat lamps: his father’s apartment was never this cluttered, but the gym was never on the verge of closing. Now there were two days left. Tsuru hadn’t considered what would happen to the gym itself, but real estate in Saffron was hard to come by, and Sabrina probably hadn’t earned enough in Twisted Spoon sponsorships and prize money to afford a commercial property … and maybe the League owned the gyms anyway?
Tsuru had never asked. It hadn’t been important before.
When Tsuru woke, it was nearly noon. Bright, crisp sunlight streamed in from the living room window. Stomach twisting, Tsuru checked his pokégear for a response from Sabrina, only to realize he hadn’t plugged it in, and the battery had died. Of course.
Koichi had left two bananas, a quart-sized container of mealworms for Cici, and a carton of natto on the counter next to the spare housekey. Koichi’s note—At gym. Meet you for dinner? 7pm. Call if you need anything—held an invitation so rote it hardly needed to exist, but Tsuru smiled anyway.
Cici was still hunched beneath the heat lamps, now covered in a thick woolen blanket. The breloom looked up briefly when he entered, and then resumed staring intently at the plastic puzzle cube grasped between her thick claws. It looked like she’d adjusted herself mid-morning to remain in the window’s trapezoid of sunlight. Tsuru felt a pang of worry seeing how tightly she bunched herself despite the heat lamp and blanket—it was good that she’d taken an interest in scratching at whatever treats Koishi had left in the cube, rather than messing with his father’s furniture, but the breloom typically wasn’t one to leave a punching bag unpunched. Kanto wasn’t that much colder than Hoenn, he’d figured, but then again, he wasn’t part plant. If it came to it, she could spend the trip in her pokéball, but he knew how much she hated that.
Speaking of differences between Hoenn and Kanto. Banana in one hand, Tsuru rummaged around in his backpack with the other, struggling to remove the thick plastic bag he’d received at customs. A nylon drawstring dangled off the end of it, along with a tag sporting helpful instructions in pictogram form. The customs agent’s bored and clinical demeanor had all but suggested that this was barely more than a formality, but it never hurt to be safe.
There was a knock at the door.
Cici perked up immediately, mushroom-topped head on a swivel, and Tsuru whirled around, trying not to look as guilty as he felt. He cleared his throat and strode over to the door, instinctively trying to look through the peephole before realizing there was none. Right. Why would his father expect guests? Tsuru fumbled around with the unfamiliar latch before managing to get the door open. “Can I ...”
His greeting trailed off. She was shorter than her interviews made her look, and she was dressed in casual maroon turtleneck and white jeans rather than the shiny red of her competition dress, but there was no mistaking it.
“Hello, Tsuru,” Sabrina, taking a step back from the door to bow her head in an informal greeting. When Tsuru didn’t respond, she added, “I tried to call you this morning, but your phone kept going to voicemail. I believe it’s past breakfast, but is now a good time?”
His pokégear, which was charging by the window—all the power outlets in the guest room were buried—chose that moment to blink on.
Does it look like it? Tsuru almost blurted out, painfully aware that he was still in yesterday’s clothes and hadn’t brushed his hair. As if on cue, Cici shoved her broad head past his knee to try to inspect the newcomer, and Tsuru had to bodily lean into the doorframe to keep his balance. He was painfully aware of Sabrina’s eyes, which were a cold shade of red, studying every inch of him. “Of course. It’s good to see you again. My father is at his gym, if that’s …?”
“I know. I had been hoping to speak to you, Tsuru.” She blinked politely and then forced a smile. “It’s been so long since we were able to catch up.”
She’d probably already had a vision that he’d just woken up and this was the best time to stop by. Tsuru nudged Cici out of the way with his knee and opened the door, wedging it right over the morning edition of the Saffron Times, which, as luck would have it, appeared to be sporting a full front page on Sabrina Natsume: Saffron’s Rising Star. Tsuru kicked the paper under a magazine and cleared his throat. “Would you like to come in?”
“I’m afraid now I’m the one running short on time. I was in the area on my way to the Orchid District to shoot a promotional video for Koko Ichiban. I was hoping to trouble you to walk with me.”
“Koko Ichiban?” Tsuru’s curiosity outweighed his manners for a moment.
“Saffron’s number one curry puffs,” Sabrina intoned emotionlessly, and for a moment she was utterly familiar, inextricable from the bowl-cut eight year-old Tsuru remembered from classes over a decade ago. “No morning is complete without one.”
Tsuru blinked.
“The owner is an old family friend,” Sabrina said by way of explanation, sounding utterly disinterested with the topic at hand while peering through Tsuru’s knees, where a breloom was trying to sprout despite his best efforts. “And it seems that currently my stardom makes up when my acting and enthusiasm are lacking. May I come in while you get ready?”
Numbly, Tsuru held the door open, and Cici skittered back. Sabrina walked in, cold eyes sweeping across the apartment in an instant. Whatever she thought of it, her face was completely unreadable.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Tsuru asked on reflex, and then mentally kicked himself. Nothing in his father’s cabinets or fridge had suggested his father had entertained anyone, even himself, in this apartment, unless mixing equal parts mayonnaise and protein powder counted. “Water?”
Sabrina looked up from her inspection of Koichi’s cinderblock TV stand. Could she read his mind? That was only a rumor, right? “No, thank you.”
Tsuru bit back a scream of exasperation, and instead said politely, “This is Cici. She’s, uh—” Sabrina probably knew foreign pokémon, all things considered, but in that case it’d be even stupider to introduce the breloom by species. “—friendly. I’ll be back in a sec.”
He ducked into the bathroom and let the door slam shut behind him. As an indulgence, he allowed himself thirty seconds staring into the mirror, knuckles white on the rim of the sink. Less than ten hours in Kanto and he’d already managed to dig the hole even deeper. Koichi would probably kill him, what with tenets of war and fraternizing with the enemy …
It couldn’t be helped. Tsuru flinched away from his reflection and jammed his toothbrush into his mouth with one hand while combing his hair with the other.
A few minutes later, when he exited as presentable as he could make himself, both Sabrina and Cici were scrutinizing the thick plastic bag Tsuru had left draped over the couch. “Spore bag?” She glanced up at Tsuru’s hands, and then back at Cici. “Is it safe to touch her without gloves?”
“Hasn’t hurt me yet.” Technically an answer. Maybe she had delicate skin. Tsuru busied himself with hooking the bag over Cici’s tail, and answered the other question because it was easier than pondering the absurdity of Sabrina being in front of him to ask it. “Breloom molt the ends of their tails in the winter, since that’s where all their reproductive spores are. With the colder weather in Kanto, it’s unlikely that their spores would be able to fruit, but they don’t want the entire tailcap being left somewhere to damage the ecosystem.” He paused—maybe it was odd that Sabrina was asking this. “You recognized spore bags?”
“I raise a venomoth, though he rarely makes tournament appearances,” Sabrina said, answering Cici’s insistent headbutting with an inquisitive pat, taking care to avoid the berry-red arils dotting the brim of the breloom’s hat. “Your breloom is very well-behaved. Do you battle much in Hoenn?”
Tsuru tried his best to keep his face straight. But it was hard not to hear Koichi’s words echoing in the apartment’s narrow walls. There’s plenty of ecology majors, son. But battlers with talent? Those are hard to come by, and if you leave now you’ll—“Not anymore. I’m studying on a research grant from Devon Corporation. The effects of light pollution on tidal tentacool populations.”
“Ah.” Sabrina seemed unsurprised by his answer, but then again, she seemed unsurprised by anything. “I assume it’s bad?”
“Beneficial, actually.” Tsuru snagged the spare key off of the counter and shrugged on his jacket, motioning to the door. Cici misread the queue and immediately bolted after him, and he decided it wasn’t worth explaining to her that it was cold outside. She could always retreat into her pokéball once she realized.
“In what way?” Sabrina asked.
There was only so much of his thesis he could expect to recite in polite conversation, and there was the nagging feeling that Sabrina wouldn’t have taken a detour just to make smalltalk about his academic exploits. “During the day, they synthesize sunlight in their crystals to power up their beam attacks, and it turns out that a lot of artificial light has a similar, but less pronounced effect.”
Sabrina nodded politely, and he was left uncomfortably reminded of primary school again, with a teacher chiding him for answering with a hundred words when six would do.
They spent the elevator ride down in silence, save for the creaking of the cables and the plasticky sound of Cici fiddling with her spore bag. At the third floor, Sabrina tilted her head and asked, “How’s your mother?”
Still in Hoenn, still divorced, Tsuru almost answered, but what came out instead was, “Why aren’t you having a challenge match with my father?”
The elevator dinged cheerfully and the doors rolled open, revealing the steady chaos of Saffron’s bustling lunch rush beyond the lobby doors. Sabrina didn’t move, but instead raised one eyebrow and studied Tsuru carefully. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“What?”
Sabrina sighed and stepped out of the elevator, descending the foyer steps two at a time into the throng of people. She navigated the sidewalks with ruthless efficiency, and Cici burst into a delighted jog, leaving Tsuru straining to catch up as Sabrina murmured, just barely above the thrum of the city, “I have invited your father to a match through every private method I can conceive of. Short of blasting down the gym doors and declaring my right to combat, which I would find distastefully unorthodox in front of his students, I cannot conceive of a way to ensure his reply.”
It was impossible to believe Koichi would refuse a challenge, let alone one steeped in tradition, and yet it was unlikely that Sabrina would lie about this. He thought of the pile of mail on the doormat. “Are you … are you sure he’s gotten your messages?”
Sabrina pulled up sharply at a crosswalk, her dark hair billowing slightly as a bus swept by. “I have spent my fair share of time with my back against a wall. I am more than certain he knows.”
Tsuru’s stomach twisted. “He’s a real stickler for tradition, you know. I could look up the proper way to—”
Emotion flashed across her face for the first time since their conversation had started. “I am Sabrina, firstborn of the Natsume clan. Triumphant against Wataru of the Black Valley, and his bannermen as well. I bear the eight sigils of Kanto’s lords, and with them I invoke my right as challenger. May our battle be witnessed by fire, ice, and thunder.”
For a moment it felt like the whole street had gone silent, but as Saffron’s crowds continued flowing around them, casting curious looks, Tsuru realized it was just for him and the roaring in his ears. “I’m sorry.”
Sabrina straightened, and her face returned once again to its flat, detached expression. She took a careful step so they were standing beneath a shop awning rather than blocking the sidewalk. “So he hasn’t said anything to you?”
“He made it sound like you were the one avoiding the challenge.” Tsuru wasn’t sure if it was fair to Koichi to say that, but it was too late now.
A van rolled past them and began unloading pallets of fish onto the street. Sabrina wrinkled her nose but didn’t move. “You mentioned you studied ecology, so forgive me if I tell a story of my own. Are you familiar with the Marsh District?”
Tsuru racked his brain. It did sound familiar, but if it was in Saffron he couldn’t point to it on a map. “No? North of the Pearl District, maybe?”
It was a hedge of an answer; most places were north of Pearl, and Sabrina didn’t acknowledge it as anything but. “By about thirty kilometers. It was a small fishing village for quite some time. It was also my home. I learned, when I was a girl, that perhaps three generations ago it had been paved over, while Saffron chafed at its borders. I was sad for the pokémon, but I was grateful to learn about the change, for I am not in possession of gills, and would not have done well in the swamp.” She smiled at her own joke, and when Tsuru didn’t, her smile wilted and she continued, “This is why I train a venomoth. But that isn’t why I wanted to tell this story.”
“It’s about the politoed, isn’t it?” Tsuru asked, a fragment of a branched evolution lecture returning to him. Poliwhirl evolved into two forms in theory, but while a poliwrath’s powerful swimming capabilities allowed them to hunt in Kanto’s fast-flowing rivers—and also granted them a niche in the competitive circuit, like with Matsu—politoed favored wetlands, and had been driven west to Johto during the Industrial Era.
And it was probably a metaphor, like she’d said. The politoed, Koichi, or the schoolboy who waved cautiously at a sullen girl in a bowlcut, needed to accept the change as it came, and vanish into myth or zoo as modernization continued to sweep across Saffron.
The look she gave him bordered on pity. “The Marsh District is your father’s ancestral home, for which he was named. I suspect, he, too, carries that part of his home with him when he refuses to replace his ace poliwrath with a more conventional, or younger, fighter. But you are correct; this is a story about the politoed.” Sabrina cast a glance at Cici, who was watching, enraptured and uncomprehending. “The intent had been to leave many of the marshlands intact, as a conservational place, before Fuschia’s safari zone took that role. But the politoed made for poor neighbors: they did not fight their new brethren, but by night they bellowed raucously at the moon. I am told the cacophony was quite unsettling. So the developers took a little more of the swamp, and a little more, hoping to drive the politoed out piecewise.”
She paused expectantly. This part hadn’t been in his lecture, but there weren’t marshes around Saffron today. “And it didn’t work?”
“The rest of the marsh waned. Hemmed in by mountain and sea, the tangela and kangaskhan wandered south, and fared poorly, for they were not migrators. The psyduck went north, and the venonat followed. But the politoed remained, so the marsh grew smaller still. Until, finally, the developers reached the western bank of the marsh, where the salt washed around an enormous rock shaped like a crown. They feared the sturdy stone would damage their machines, so they loaded it up on carts and carried it west to Pewter. And as soon as it was gone, the politoed left, and never returned.”
One of his hands twitched, reflexively, closer to a fist. So they weren’t the politoed; they were the swamp. Somehow, confiding something as trivial as his degree to a former classmate now felt like he’d breached his own trust. “You think we should do the same,” he said hollowly.
“I think,” said Sabrina carefully, “that if the developers had discovered the king’s rock first, they might’ve spared the rest of the marsh.” When Tsuru did not respond, she continued, “Your father’s badge was the first one I earned.”
Tsuru grunted neutrally. There was no shame in pushing a type advantage early.
Sabrina raised one eyebrow. “It took me three tries, and my journey would’ve ended after the second failure had he not encouraged me to return.” She exhaled, gaze drifting briefly towards Cici. “I think he is a great man. I think we are in debt for his tutelage, and there are thousands across Kanto who would feel the same. I also believe there are celebrations to be had in endings, and with them, closure.”
It was a pretty speech, he reflected. “Not your endings, though. Otherwise you should’ve celebrated never getting my father’s badge.”
“I should’ve,” she agreed evenly, fixing him with a look that made it seem like she knew precisely when Tsuru had dropped his own badge challenge. “If that had been where I ended my journey.”
The pit that had been forming in Tsuru’s stomach ever since he’d left Rustboro grew a little deeper. It wasn’t like Koichi to give up on this. Something was wrong, and if even a relative outsider could see it …
Sabrina’s pokégear trilled, and she frowned. Without looking at it, she said, “I will be late soon. Please, consider what I have said. Tomorrow evening, I will be Saffron’s gym leader regardless of what happens. As I am sure you both know, it is a formality, but I think it is important—for him, and all of Saffron—that your father accepts my challenge.”
She waited a moment for Tsuru to reply, and, looking torn when he didn’t, turned and vanished seamlessly into the stream of foot traffic.
When she rounded the corner, Tsuru sagged against the wall behind him, frustration prickling through his chest. It was hard not to feel tricked throughout all of this—by Koichi, by Sabrina, by everyone else. Make his father see reason and close the gym? How could that be fair?
Cici crooned, butting her broad head up against his palm like she normally did when she noticed he was upset.
Startled, Tsuru looked down—the fleshy top of her cap was clammy and cold, not that she appeared to care. “Let’s find you somewhere warm,” he said, shoving his other hand in his pocket. He wondered how he looked now, if being bundled in a coat during what was probably a temperate autumn day marked him as a stranger even before anyone noticed the breloom trundling after him, loudly crinkling her bag. Did they see the same Saffron he did? There was a brightly lit bar draped in neon idol posters; he remembered when it was a dingy ramen shop his parents had taken him too for his eighth birthday. And the nondescript white foyer in the legal office across the street—did anyone remember that it used to be a bookstore with overflowing shelves?
Here, there, now. He wasn’t entirely surprised when his feet led him to his father’s gym. Of all the buildings in Saffron, this was the one that exactly matched his memories, at least in shape. Its clay roof tiles still glistened in the sun, and its rice paper windows were still framed by intricate woodwork. The bus stop outside of its porch had a few new lines running through it, and one of the entryway tiles had been replaced blue instead of black, but that was it.
Cici recognized their destination, and dashed over to it with a triumphant squawk. Tsuru crossed the street slowly, regarding the gym the same way a rattata might circle an injured pidgeot. In his memories the gym had always been stalwart, strong, intimidating. Maybe he was taller, or maybe the secret of its demise buoyed him, but as he trailed his hand across the entryway railing, the stairs seemed short and stooped, the shadows cast in the windows less mysterious.
The gym matched his memories, but the world had gone on.
A boy in his early teens chattered into his pokégear by the bus stop, oblivious to Tsuru. “And his poliwrath! It was so fast, Dad! Flamer was no match for it … The Fighting Master says I showed promise, and should come back next week.”
Tsuru’s heart twisted. There wouldn’t be a next week. People deserved to know that. Koichi couldn’t just keep telling them that things were running just fine, even if that’s what he needed to be true. Reflexively, he reached out for Cici, only to realize she was already inside.
Sabrina wasn’t right about everything. She could’ve remained on her ivory throne at the Indigo Plateau; the rite of succession had existed for centuries and no Champion had ever actually invoked it in decades. But Tsuru had a feeling that, if the gym’s fall was inevitable, she was right. There had to be an ending.
And it was inevitable, he realized, looking over this squat little building that was barely a dot on Saffron’s changed horizon.
His finger hovered over the send button on his pokégear for a moment longer. And then, heart thumping, he watched the message go out:
The response came almost immediately.
The dilapidated gym loomed over him like a dying tree.
Tsuru walked into the gym. Cici was already delightedly pestering Matsu by bowing her head in front of him and shaking her tail as fast as she could, a clear invitation to battle that was greatly hindered by the spore bag. The poliwrath, to his credit, sat stoically while the arena’s chansey healed the small burn on his right arm. They were the only ones left in the battle hall, now completely stripped of furniture, and was nothing more than a simple wooden platform flanked by tatami mats for bystanders. The lights had also been dimmed, casting the arena in thick, dramatic shadows: with his stoic expression, the chansey by his side, and the breloom posturing beneath him, the poliwrath looked for a moment like a king presiding over a miniature court.
Swallowing heavily, Tsuru turned to the back of the gym, which served as his father’s office. He froze by the door, watching through the rice paper windows as his father’s silhouette paced back and forth between the wooden lattices. The walls were old and thin, and while his father’s voice was polite, it still carried clearly: “Who’s this? You’re with the news too? Which news?” Pause. “Why? No, there’s nothing happening tomorrow. No. No comment. Please do not call this number again.”
Sabrina had already gotten the word out. Idiot, Tsuru thought, for what must’ve been the tenth time this trip. News flew in Saffron. He should’ve talked to Koichi first.
But it didn’t matter, as the door slid open, with Koichi right behind it, his eyebrows creased in a way that for him might as well have been fury. His expression flattened as he pulled up short in the doorway. “Ah, Tsuru! It’s a bit early, and I need to deal with something. Saffron News Nightly is saying—”
“I told Sabrina you’d accept her challenge,” Tsuru blurted. “Tomorrow at noon.”
“—and they want to know if they bring a camera crew in, if Matsu’s been approved for photography and videography releases! Amateurs. He’s a gym ace, of course—what?” Koichi, who had been sweeping his way over to check on Matsu, pulled up short. He did not turn around. “Tsuru, what did you do?”
And against the rigid angles of his father’s uniformed shoulders, all of his excuses finally felt so flimsy—the boy at the bus stop, Sabrina’s story, the cluttered guest bedroom. The poliwrath who adapted rather than the politoed who left, coming from the same tadpole, making different choices. Those weren’t the real reasons. Tsuru’s voice sounded like it was coming from someone else when it said, “You were going to make a decision you’d regret later.”
“So you decided to step in?” Koichi asked, his voice dangerously level. The three-pokémon court stopped what they were doing, drawn to the sudden tension in the air, and the gym went deathly silent.
“You were acting like nothing was wrong.” Tsuru could already feel the conversation slipping away from him, his words bowing like reeds before cold sheets of rain. This was how arguments with Koichi always went. “But it is. It’s over. You need to let go.”
“Am I not letting go?” Koichi asked coldly, and even from here Tsuru knew his eyes were trained on the empty tatami mats and barren walls. “Should I have bulldozed the building on my way out yesterday? What more is it that you want from me?”
“To believe it,” Tsuru said, but he knew as he spoke that sentiments like that were like spitting into the wind when it came to Koichi. “Dad, you can’t—”
“What do you care about the gym? About this, about us?” Koichi whirled around. He debated much like he battled—the blows were never completely beneath the belt, but when there was an opening they came fast and hard. “Just drop this like you dropped your Hoenn League challenge, like you dropped your fancy math major, like you dropped everything and left this entire country, Tsuru.”
The anxiety Tsuru had felt in his stomach curdled into anger. “I was nine!” he shouted back. “What was I supposed to do, sleep on the punching bags in the dojo? Mom said you didn’t love her any more, and then she moved back home to Nana, and I was a child.”
“And you’re still acting like one, coming back once a year and acting like you know how the real world works.” Koichi didn’t have to shout; when he was angry, his booming voice carried in a way Tsuru knew all too well. “I don’t have a successor, Tsuru. That’s why Sabrina wants this place. Did she mention that in your chat? She thinks it will soon be time for me to pass on the mantle, and she doesn’t think it’ll go to you.”
Tsuru opened his mouth and then closed it. Of course she hadn’t mentioned that, because then he wouldn’t have listened to her. It wasn’t fair. “So it’s my fault then?”
“No, Tsu,” Koichi said, looking old and furious and resigned all at once. “It’s mine.”
Hot, sudden tears pricked the edges of Tsuru’s vision.
“The Kurosawa seat is one of the oldest in the region. We have been a pillarstone of Saffron since before it even bore this name. And it is my duty to be at the end of this line.” Koichi sighed, and when he spoke again his voice was soft, and defeated. “But it will be on my terms. The fall of my family’s legacy will not be a spectacle for the paparazzi. I will not play the part of the unyielding master overwhelmed by the glitz of progress. I will let us end with dignity, quietly. This, I am sure, Sabrina understands. Even if today you cannot.”
A firm but familiar hand clasped on Tsuru’s shoulder, and then Koichi left.
Tsuru slumped down onto one of the tatami mats, swallowing back the thick lump in his throat as best as he could. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Matsu and the chansey looking at him cautiously, two pairs of eyes frozen with indecision. Cici scampered up beside him, butting her head firmly against his palm. He patted her absently, focusing on the green of her hat, which was already faintly browning away to its winter coloration, to distract himself.
“It’s fine,” he said, more to himself than to his father’s pokémon, but they looked away guiltily anyway. “I’m fine.” He was painfully aware that everyone in the room was focusing on him. “Did you still want to spar?”
The breloom pricked her head up, and after an encouraging nod from Tsuru, she clambered up onto the arena. Matsu paused for a moment, bulbous eyes glancing sidelong at Tsuru, and then sank into a formal bow. The chansey shuffled back.
Trilling delightedly, Cici launched herself at her opponent, bagged tail flapping in the wind, pennant-high. The poliwrath took a careful step to the side, and Cici stumbled to correct herself, ducking just under a precise punch in the process.
Tsuru let the sounds of their match wash over him, a sudden sense of nostalgia seeping into his skin. The last time he’d battled competitively had been at Dewford. A different fighting gym, a different smarting loss. His schoolwork was more important, and seven badges was an excellent showing by Hoenn standards, and he’d gone long enough without a successful badge challenge that the writing was on the wall. That was what he’d told Koichi, at least. But Tsuru hadn’t mentioned the part where he’d lost the challenge, hadn’t been able to admit to his father that he wasn’t anywhere close to being a fighting-type master.
Thwap. Cici’s tail hit the ground with a heavy thud, and even though he’d seen it happen several times already, Tsuru still felt a pang of alarm as she triumphantly leapt away without it, her form suddenly mismatched and empty. Not that she seemed to care, instead choosing to use her newfound weightlessness to launch another flurry of punches. After her first molt as a breloom, she’d stopped being afraid of it.
Years ago he’d trained here too. He’d learned discipline and responsibility and honor, sweated beneath the watchful sun of the Kantonese flag, waited at the bus stop with his lips puckered around the rind of an oran berry. There must’ve been one last day where it had all been carefree, before every conversation with Koichi felt like a battle, before his parents’ shouting silhouettes danced across the gym office’s rice paper windows like shadow puppets, before the contents of his childhood room were bundled into a suitcase and a one-way ticket thrust into his hand. Had he valued those quieter days, when it felt like home was everywhere he knew? When had he even thought to miss it?
His gaze caught on Cici’s tail, discarded where it had fallen. He imagined the forests back outside of Rustboro, with their milder winters and their brown boughs full of breloom curling away from the oncoming long nights, shedding the things they wouldn’t need to survive the next few months, quietly confident that it would all grow back one day.
He’d stopped competitively battling years ago. But he’d never met a breloom who spent half the year dreaming of spring.
And suddenly, he knew what he needed to do.
The gym was not built for this many people. They made do as best as they could, kneeling respectfully on the tatami mats that were not made for a camera crew, cramming into every nook and cranny. A few reporters narrated quietly into recording devices or cameras. A handful of influencers dotted the crowd. And, twisting Tsuru’s heart most of all, were the group of gangly teens in karategi, bearing a collection of posterboards that together read, THANK YOU MASTER KOICHI.
All of them knew not to touch the wooden arena platform, which was only for the fighting master and his opponent.
Tsuru cast a glance towards the office windows, where his father’s silhouette was so still it might’ve been mistaken for a statue. He had been in the gym when Tsuru had arrived at dawn, and had not moved since, even when the halls began to fill with spectators, an hour before the match was supposed to start. From where he knelt at the head of the room, Tsuru could see the crowd spilling out into the streets.
Saffron had gathered for them, one way or another. There would be no undoing this.
One minute before noon, the back of the crowd began to glitter with camera flashes, shifting like leaves as Sabrina cut effortlessly through, her eyes sweeping through the crowd before returning to Tsuru. If she was surprised that Koichi wasn’t there, she didn’t show it.
Exactly sixty seconds later, she ascended the stairs onto the arena, her shadow cast in four different directions by the overhead lights and camera crews. She bowed at the waist before stepping into the arena, and spoke in a practiced, measured pitch that cut through all other sound. “I am Sabrina, firstborn of the Natsume clan. Triumphant against Wataru of the Black Valley, and his bannermen as well. I bear the eight sigils of Kanto’s lords, and with them I invoke my right as challenger.”
The gym was silent. Tsuru cast one final look at the office windows—Koichi’s silhouette had turned, but it had not moved—and then stood up.
“I am Tsuru, firstborn of the Kurosawa clan,” he declared, feet slightly numb as they touched the polished wooden platform. “I am honored to accept your challenge.” He was painfully aware of the collective inhalation around the room at his words, the clicking of cameras, the hushed sounds of dozens of people narrating his sudden change of events. But the words came easily. “May our battle be witnessed by fire, ice, and thunder.”
Sabrina nodded curtly, unfazed or unsurprised. They both listened politely while the referee announced the rules of substitution and switch clocks. Then: “The gym leader is to send out their first pokémon.”
Tsuru nodded. “Cic—” He cleared his throat. He needed to sound confident. “Cecelia, help me out!” Cici’s pokéball bust open, and the breloom formed on the battlefield, bouncing excitedly from foot to foot. They’d talked about this the night before. It wouldn’t be a close match, but breloom didn’t seem to have a concept for foregone conclusions, and she seemed most excited at the prospect of a new sparring partner.
For the first time since she’d entered, Sabrina looked him in the eye. “Kazumi.” She shifted her hand to the fourth pokéball at her belt and tossed it high into the sky, directing it to return to her with a lazy drift of telekinetic energy. A silvery, wizened venomoth appeared in a burst of red light.
It looks like Natsume is shaking up her roster. With only three pokémon to choose from, this is a serious commitment, but Venomoth’s typing should— Tsuru blinked once, hoping to clear from his mind the throng of the reporters, the constellation of camera lenses glinting around him. This was for the pale-faced schoolgirl in the front row with her machop, for the teenager in the back with his portion of the sign reading THANK, the stiff silhouette of—
The office door slid open, its sound and movement lost in the hubbub of the crowd. But Tsuru had been watching for it the whole time, so when Koichi appeared in the doorframe, their eyes met. Tsuru stood there, his mouth frozen halfway through his first command, feeling much like a stray meowth caught scrabbling around a garbage can. An eternity seemed to stretch between the heartbeats pounding in his ears.
Koichi surveyed the crowd for only a moment, his expression unreadable, before his gaze returned to Tsuru, standing ramrod straight on the arena. Slowly, like sunlight crowning over clouds, Koichi broke into a grin. Go, he mouthed.
Tsuru couldn’t help but mirror the smile despite everything. The faint smell of teak and dust, the rival ahead, the battlefield simultaneously narrowing and unfolding before him. He didn’t regret his choices, but he’d missed the quiet lurch in his chest every time he started a pokémon battle, no matter how long it’d been.
“Mach punch!” he commanded, finding his voice steady as it slipped into familiar vernacular. Triumphantly, Cici darted forward, clawed feet scrabbling against the hardwood.
There was only one way this battle would go. Everyone in the room new it, with the same certainty that the sun would set this evening and the snows would one day come. But not all endings had to be bad, or forever, right?
And when the breloom leapt into the air, eclipsing Sabrina’s thin-pressed lips and Koichi’s grin, Tsuru felt, for a moment, that he understood.
Saffron’s fighting gym stood for centuries. Tsuru returns home in time for its fall.
This was written for Bulbagarden's 2024 Oneshot Contest for the theme "fall", where it got first place.
Content Warnings: For once I don't think there are any. Loose drama with parents and divorce. Miraculously, not even a baby swear word. If you think there's something else that should be tagged here, please let me know!
Crit Pref: Most anything goes! I'm probably most interested in how the pacing and character dynamics feel, but if you've got anything else on your mind lmk!
Content Warnings: For once I don't think there are any. Loose drama with parents and divorce. Miraculously, not even a baby swear word. If you think there's something else that should be tagged here, please let me know!
Crit Pref: Most anything goes! I'm probably most interested in how the pacing and character dynamics feel, but if you've got anything else on your mind lmk!
*
“They can’t do this. It’s just not how it’s done.” Koichi punctuated each sentence with a jab of his untouched takoyaki skewer, splattering droplets of sauce on the wet pavement and launching the furthest one precariously closer to flying off the end. “Complete lack of respect for tradition, is what it is.”
“But Dad, that’s how gym succession works these days. If that’s how they’re doing it, that’s how it’s done,” Tsuru said wearily, adjusting the hood of his raincoat. That wasn’t entirely true, but it was also far too cold and far too late at night for pedantry. It seemed liked winter was coming early to Saffron this year, or he’d forgotten how readily its grey skies imparted sleet. Between the broken strap on his backpack, the sudden freezing downpour, and his father’s increasingly energetic rant about the gym, the half mile walk home from the train station may as well have been up the slopes of Mt. Moon. His own takoyaki and the warmth it brought was long gone.
“A Kurosawa has held Saffron’s gym for twelve generations. And the seat’s been for fighting-types since before gyms and the League were even a spurious thought in some smooth-handed desk jockey’s brain, Tsu,” Koichi huffed, and when he stepped over a puddle at the bottom of the crosswalk, Tsuru was struck by how stiff the movement was. “That’s got to count for something.”
But it doesn’t, Tsuru couldn’t bring himself to say, and the rain felt even colder. If it counted, this wouldn’t be happening. “Who’s the challenger?” he asked instead. His father always lightened up around battle strategy.
“Sabrina Natsume.” Koichi muttered the words so darkly they might’ve been an incantation.
The pokégear in Tsuru’s front pocket suddenly felt treacherously heavy. “The one who went to my primary school?”
His father grunted in affirmation.
Tsuru raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t been expecting to make much of a his father’s answer—spending eleven months of the year in Hoenn usually left him with casual, at best, familiarity with Kanto’s League standings—but everyone knew Sabrina. Type-specialists usually didn’t do well in the League, and few trainers had the skills to train more than one psychic-type. Sabrina did both. In the increasingly more technical modern League, most commentators agreed that simply raising more powerful pokémon no longer cut it—but no one could deny that Sabrina flew in the face of that assessment. The coolly confident young woman trouncing match after match on the television was unrecognizable from the quiet girl with an unflatteringly shaggy bowlcut scowling in the back row of first grade. Four pokémon, six months, eight badges. Last month ago, Tsuru had stayed up past the timezone differences to watch her almost effortless sweep of Champion Lance.
And that would’ve been all he knew. Except yesterday morning, Tsuru had received an innocuous text from a number he’d saved over ten years ago.
Hello, Tsuru. I heard you’d be back in town soon. I’m sure you’ll be busy, but would you be interested in catching up? Let me know. –Sabrina“The Natsume family has been in Saffron for some generations, so they should know better,” Koichi was saying when Tsuru zoned back into the conversation. “This simply isn’t how she’s supposed to go about it. Perhaps if she married in, then her children … I mean, you did write that poem for her sixth birthday ...”
Tsuru rolled his eyes. Barely half an hour into the visit and his father was already missing the forest for playing matchmaker. “When’s the challenge? There’s two days left, yeah?” They rounded the corner to his father’s block. It was like turning off a light switch—suddenly the street bustle seemed quieter and the city glow less bright, cushioned by the row of poplar trees lining the street.
Koichi turned to look at him, his cheeks gaunt and hollow in the yellow glow of the street lamp. “There won’t be one.”
“What?” A fighting monotype versus a psychic monotype was only ever going to go one way, even before factoring in what commentators loved to call the Sabrina Factor, but … “Why not?”
“The Champion is entitled to any lesser seat.” Koichi fumbled around with his uneaten takoyaki before handing it to Tsuru to search for his keys properly. “If she wants Saffron, it is her right.”
By then Koichi had rounded into the apartment stairwell. Koichi’s breathing, honed by years of rigor, remained unchanged, but the twelve flights of stairs left Tsuru gassed, and the conversation dwindled. Koichi opened the door and busied himself noisily shaking out his umbrella. Tsuru entered his father’s narrow apartment carefully, but there was no sudden flurry of movement preceding Matsu, his father’s poliwrath, rushing to greet—inspect, intimidate, call it what you would—late night visitors. Without him, the narrow apartment’s entryway, living room, and kitchen all felt crammed into one empty space, hemmed in by the dull rainfall outside.
“He’s at the gym,” Koichi said, noticing Tsuru’s hesitation. “Hasn’t left since we got the news.”
Tsuru nodded absently, though his eye was caught on the empty kitchen trashcan, which was normally filled with takeout containers.
Koichi followed Tsuru’s gaze and huffed. “I cleaned before you got here.”
Tsuru nodded absently, trying to make as little of a show as possible stepping over the pile of mail and newspapers on the doormat. SAFFRON GYM DYNASTY POISED TO FALL, the headline of a tabloid proclaimed in garish caps. “Guest room still on the left?” he asked, eyeing the two shut doors. The eleven hour time difference between Rustboro and Saffron meant he wasn’t even close to being tired, but it was nearly two in the morning, and Koichi was likely to be up before dawn.
Koichi grunted in affirmation, and added, gesturing behind the battered black sofa in the living room, “The heat lamps you got on rent from the pokécenter are behind there. Couldn’t fit them in your room. I turned them on for a few hours yesterday and they didn’t seem like they’d catch anything on fire.”
“Thanks.” Something about that sentence didn’t make sense, but Koichi had already unlaced his boots and was walking away. Tsuru patted around the side of his backpack for Cici’s pokéball, and realized he was still holding his father’s untouched takoyaki. “Did you want—”
The door on the right closed.
Tsuru exhaled through his teeth, and then began rummaging as quietly as possible through the kitchen cabinets for a plastic container for the takoyaki. He hadn’t expected anything about this trip to be easy, but that hadn’t stopped him from booking the eighteen hour, double-transfer train ride from Rustboro as soon as he’d heard. Sabrina really had the worst timing. He’d owe a few emails to his lab PI, and his friends had planned a trip up to the hot springs during midterm recess that he’d miss, and skipping lectures this close to midterms was going to mean grueling catch-up later, and—none of that could be helped now. He couldn’t let his father do this alone.
The last drawer rattled on its tracks and would’ve been too small for a container anyway—Tsuru had only checked out of habit. As usual, Koichi’s cabinets were meticulously organized and just short of barren. He settled for some aluminum foil, clumsily wrapping up the takoyaki into a lumpy, silvery slug. The fridge, stocked as sparsely as the rest of the kitchen, contained a bag of mayonnaise, half a jar of furikake, a squat jar of protein powder, and still-sealed box of Koko Ichiban curry puffs. Tsuru’s favorite. His father was probably keeping Matsu company sleeping at the gym. If he slept at all.
Tsuru closed the fridge door with a sigh and turned towards the living room, which was exactly as he remembered it: a coffee table and sofa facing a CRT television stacked on cinderblocks, all shoved into the corners to make room for a black standalone punching bag. Tsuru ran his fingers over the punching bag’s tattered vinyl, which was worn almost white just above his shoulder and at his navel—good to see both Matsu and Koichi embracing bachelor life. Did poliwrath even mate?
All of this was probably a matter for the morning. Tsuru unclipped Cici’s pokéball from his belt and thumbed the release mechanism. Its familiar flood of red light resolved into a lithe green figure who came up to just below Tsuru’s torso, trailed by a thick clubbed tail. The breloom blinked owlishly back at Tsuru from beneath the stout brim of her hat.
“We’re visiting my father in Saffron,” he explained in hushed tones. They’d talked about this before the journey, but she tended to struggle with concepts like areas geographically larger than Petalburg Woods, and off-season migration, and divided families, and ... “And Matsu.” Her eyes lit up faintly at the mention of her sparring partner. “You can sleep over there.”
Cici, who had already been drifting towards the dull red glow of the heat lamps, trundled around the sofa to inspect her temporary bed. It was dark outside, and she was a grass-type, so she yawned, flopped to the ground, and promptly fell asleep.
The light beneath Koichi’s door clicked off.
Tsuru bit back a sigh. He lingered by the living room window, tracing over the fuzzy silhouettes of Saffron’s skyline as the rain lightened to cold fog. Rustboro, which went quiet and dark by ten, almost as if enforced by curfew, had felt like a completely different world when he’d first moved there with Mom; now nine years later, it was Saffron that felt like an alien landscape, with dancing streetlights and glowing yellow skyscrapers looming out of neon-tinted fog.
But it was still home, even if it didn’t feel exactly as he remembered. He fished his pokégear out of his pocket, where his most recent message blinked, unanswered:
Hi Sabrina, it’s been so long! I think things will get busier the later I stay, so let’s meet up early. My train arrives in ten hours, so perhaps we could grab breakfast tomorrow?Idiot, Tsuru thought sourly. He should’ve known.
He checked on Cici one final time—the breloom was now snoring gently—and then scooped up his backpack and walked towards the guest room. The door only opened halfway, and once Tsuru wriggled inside and turned on the light, he was able to see why: short of the bed and a narrow path to the door, every inch of the room was filled. Stacks of cardboad boxes bulging with gloves and athletic tape, a tower of stiffly-starched karategi, and even a small forest of benches peppered with escrima sticks were piled atop what looked like four punching bags, their chains neatly coiled at their bases.
Tsuru sighed, picking his way across a tangle of belts that had fallen into the pathway, and slung his backpack around the neck and shoulders of a humanoid punching dummy. It was too late, or too early, to run the shower now. He flung himself onto the bed—firm as ever—still in his travel clothes, and stared at the ceiling. This explained Koichi’s comments about not having space for Cici’s heat lamps: his father’s apartment was never this cluttered, but the gym was never on the verge of closing. Now there were two days left. Tsuru hadn’t considered what would happen to the gym itself, but real estate in Saffron was hard to come by, and Sabrina probably hadn’t earned enough in Twisted Spoon sponsorships and prize money to afford a commercial property … and maybe the League owned the gyms anyway?
Tsuru had never asked. It hadn’t been important before.
*
When Tsuru woke, it was nearly noon. Bright, crisp sunlight streamed in from the living room window. Stomach twisting, Tsuru checked his pokégear for a response from Sabrina, only to realize he hadn’t plugged it in, and the battery had died. Of course.
Koichi had left two bananas, a quart-sized container of mealworms for Cici, and a carton of natto on the counter next to the spare housekey. Koichi’s note—At gym. Meet you for dinner? 7pm. Call if you need anything—held an invitation so rote it hardly needed to exist, but Tsuru smiled anyway.
Cici was still hunched beneath the heat lamps, now covered in a thick woolen blanket. The breloom looked up briefly when he entered, and then resumed staring intently at the plastic puzzle cube grasped between her thick claws. It looked like she’d adjusted herself mid-morning to remain in the window’s trapezoid of sunlight. Tsuru felt a pang of worry seeing how tightly she bunched herself despite the heat lamp and blanket—it was good that she’d taken an interest in scratching at whatever treats Koishi had left in the cube, rather than messing with his father’s furniture, but the breloom typically wasn’t one to leave a punching bag unpunched. Kanto wasn’t that much colder than Hoenn, he’d figured, but then again, he wasn’t part plant. If it came to it, she could spend the trip in her pokéball, but he knew how much she hated that.
Speaking of differences between Hoenn and Kanto. Banana in one hand, Tsuru rummaged around in his backpack with the other, struggling to remove the thick plastic bag he’d received at customs. A nylon drawstring dangled off the end of it, along with a tag sporting helpful instructions in pictogram form. The customs agent’s bored and clinical demeanor had all but suggested that this was barely more than a formality, but it never hurt to be safe.
There was a knock at the door.
Cici perked up immediately, mushroom-topped head on a swivel, and Tsuru whirled around, trying not to look as guilty as he felt. He cleared his throat and strode over to the door, instinctively trying to look through the peephole before realizing there was none. Right. Why would his father expect guests? Tsuru fumbled around with the unfamiliar latch before managing to get the door open. “Can I ...”
His greeting trailed off. She was shorter than her interviews made her look, and she was dressed in casual maroon turtleneck and white jeans rather than the shiny red of her competition dress, but there was no mistaking it.
“Hello, Tsuru,” Sabrina, taking a step back from the door to bow her head in an informal greeting. When Tsuru didn’t respond, she added, “I tried to call you this morning, but your phone kept going to voicemail. I believe it’s past breakfast, but is now a good time?”
His pokégear, which was charging by the window—all the power outlets in the guest room were buried—chose that moment to blink on.
Does it look like it? Tsuru almost blurted out, painfully aware that he was still in yesterday’s clothes and hadn’t brushed his hair. As if on cue, Cici shoved her broad head past his knee to try to inspect the newcomer, and Tsuru had to bodily lean into the doorframe to keep his balance. He was painfully aware of Sabrina’s eyes, which were a cold shade of red, studying every inch of him. “Of course. It’s good to see you again. My father is at his gym, if that’s …?”
“I know. I had been hoping to speak to you, Tsuru.” She blinked politely and then forced a smile. “It’s been so long since we were able to catch up.”
She’d probably already had a vision that he’d just woken up and this was the best time to stop by. Tsuru nudged Cici out of the way with his knee and opened the door, wedging it right over the morning edition of the Saffron Times, which, as luck would have it, appeared to be sporting a full front page on Sabrina Natsume: Saffron’s Rising Star. Tsuru kicked the paper under a magazine and cleared his throat. “Would you like to come in?”
“I’m afraid now I’m the one running short on time. I was in the area on my way to the Orchid District to shoot a promotional video for Koko Ichiban. I was hoping to trouble you to walk with me.”
“Koko Ichiban?” Tsuru’s curiosity outweighed his manners for a moment.
“Saffron’s number one curry puffs,” Sabrina intoned emotionlessly, and for a moment she was utterly familiar, inextricable from the bowl-cut eight year-old Tsuru remembered from classes over a decade ago. “No morning is complete without one.”
Tsuru blinked.
“The owner is an old family friend,” Sabrina said by way of explanation, sounding utterly disinterested with the topic at hand while peering through Tsuru’s knees, where a breloom was trying to sprout despite his best efforts. “And it seems that currently my stardom makes up when my acting and enthusiasm are lacking. May I come in while you get ready?”
Numbly, Tsuru held the door open, and Cici skittered back. Sabrina walked in, cold eyes sweeping across the apartment in an instant. Whatever she thought of it, her face was completely unreadable.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Tsuru asked on reflex, and then mentally kicked himself. Nothing in his father’s cabinets or fridge had suggested his father had entertained anyone, even himself, in this apartment, unless mixing equal parts mayonnaise and protein powder counted. “Water?”
Sabrina looked up from her inspection of Koichi’s cinderblock TV stand. Could she read his mind? That was only a rumor, right? “No, thank you.”
Tsuru bit back a scream of exasperation, and instead said politely, “This is Cici. She’s, uh—” Sabrina probably knew foreign pokémon, all things considered, but in that case it’d be even stupider to introduce the breloom by species. “—friendly. I’ll be back in a sec.”
He ducked into the bathroom and let the door slam shut behind him. As an indulgence, he allowed himself thirty seconds staring into the mirror, knuckles white on the rim of the sink. Less than ten hours in Kanto and he’d already managed to dig the hole even deeper. Koichi would probably kill him, what with tenets of war and fraternizing with the enemy …
It couldn’t be helped. Tsuru flinched away from his reflection and jammed his toothbrush into his mouth with one hand while combing his hair with the other.
A few minutes later, when he exited as presentable as he could make himself, both Sabrina and Cici were scrutinizing the thick plastic bag Tsuru had left draped over the couch. “Spore bag?” She glanced up at Tsuru’s hands, and then back at Cici. “Is it safe to touch her without gloves?”
“Hasn’t hurt me yet.” Technically an answer. Maybe she had delicate skin. Tsuru busied himself with hooking the bag over Cici’s tail, and answered the other question because it was easier than pondering the absurdity of Sabrina being in front of him to ask it. “Breloom molt the ends of their tails in the winter, since that’s where all their reproductive spores are. With the colder weather in Kanto, it’s unlikely that their spores would be able to fruit, but they don’t want the entire tailcap being left somewhere to damage the ecosystem.” He paused—maybe it was odd that Sabrina was asking this. “You recognized spore bags?”
“I raise a venomoth, though he rarely makes tournament appearances,” Sabrina said, answering Cici’s insistent headbutting with an inquisitive pat, taking care to avoid the berry-red arils dotting the brim of the breloom’s hat. “Your breloom is very well-behaved. Do you battle much in Hoenn?”
Tsuru tried his best to keep his face straight. But it was hard not to hear Koichi’s words echoing in the apartment’s narrow walls. There’s plenty of ecology majors, son. But battlers with talent? Those are hard to come by, and if you leave now you’ll—“Not anymore. I’m studying on a research grant from Devon Corporation. The effects of light pollution on tidal tentacool populations.”
“Ah.” Sabrina seemed unsurprised by his answer, but then again, she seemed unsurprised by anything. “I assume it’s bad?”
“Beneficial, actually.” Tsuru snagged the spare key off of the counter and shrugged on his jacket, motioning to the door. Cici misread the queue and immediately bolted after him, and he decided it wasn’t worth explaining to her that it was cold outside. She could always retreat into her pokéball once she realized.
“In what way?” Sabrina asked.
There was only so much of his thesis he could expect to recite in polite conversation, and there was the nagging feeling that Sabrina wouldn’t have taken a detour just to make smalltalk about his academic exploits. “During the day, they synthesize sunlight in their crystals to power up their beam attacks, and it turns out that a lot of artificial light has a similar, but less pronounced effect.”
Sabrina nodded politely, and he was left uncomfortably reminded of primary school again, with a teacher chiding him for answering with a hundred words when six would do.
They spent the elevator ride down in silence, save for the creaking of the cables and the plasticky sound of Cici fiddling with her spore bag. At the third floor, Sabrina tilted her head and asked, “How’s your mother?”
Still in Hoenn, still divorced, Tsuru almost answered, but what came out instead was, “Why aren’t you having a challenge match with my father?”
The elevator dinged cheerfully and the doors rolled open, revealing the steady chaos of Saffron’s bustling lunch rush beyond the lobby doors. Sabrina didn’t move, but instead raised one eyebrow and studied Tsuru carefully. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“What?”
Sabrina sighed and stepped out of the elevator, descending the foyer steps two at a time into the throng of people. She navigated the sidewalks with ruthless efficiency, and Cici burst into a delighted jog, leaving Tsuru straining to catch up as Sabrina murmured, just barely above the thrum of the city, “I have invited your father to a match through every private method I can conceive of. Short of blasting down the gym doors and declaring my right to combat, which I would find distastefully unorthodox in front of his students, I cannot conceive of a way to ensure his reply.”
It was impossible to believe Koichi would refuse a challenge, let alone one steeped in tradition, and yet it was unlikely that Sabrina would lie about this. He thought of the pile of mail on the doormat. “Are you … are you sure he’s gotten your messages?”
Sabrina pulled up sharply at a crosswalk, her dark hair billowing slightly as a bus swept by. “I have spent my fair share of time with my back against a wall. I am more than certain he knows.”
Tsuru’s stomach twisted. “He’s a real stickler for tradition, you know. I could look up the proper way to—”
Emotion flashed across her face for the first time since their conversation had started. “I am Sabrina, firstborn of the Natsume clan. Triumphant against Wataru of the Black Valley, and his bannermen as well. I bear the eight sigils of Kanto’s lords, and with them I invoke my right as challenger. May our battle be witnessed by fire, ice, and thunder.”
For a moment it felt like the whole street had gone silent, but as Saffron’s crowds continued flowing around them, casting curious looks, Tsuru realized it was just for him and the roaring in his ears. “I’m sorry.”
Sabrina straightened, and her face returned once again to its flat, detached expression. She took a careful step so they were standing beneath a shop awning rather than blocking the sidewalk. “So he hasn’t said anything to you?”
“He made it sound like you were the one avoiding the challenge.” Tsuru wasn’t sure if it was fair to Koichi to say that, but it was too late now.
A van rolled past them and began unloading pallets of fish onto the street. Sabrina wrinkled her nose but didn’t move. “You mentioned you studied ecology, so forgive me if I tell a story of my own. Are you familiar with the Marsh District?”
Tsuru racked his brain. It did sound familiar, but if it was in Saffron he couldn’t point to it on a map. “No? North of the Pearl District, maybe?”
It was a hedge of an answer; most places were north of Pearl, and Sabrina didn’t acknowledge it as anything but. “By about thirty kilometers. It was a small fishing village for quite some time. It was also my home. I learned, when I was a girl, that perhaps three generations ago it had been paved over, while Saffron chafed at its borders. I was sad for the pokémon, but I was grateful to learn about the change, for I am not in possession of gills, and would not have done well in the swamp.” She smiled at her own joke, and when Tsuru didn’t, her smile wilted and she continued, “This is why I train a venomoth. But that isn’t why I wanted to tell this story.”
“It’s about the politoed, isn’t it?” Tsuru asked, a fragment of a branched evolution lecture returning to him. Poliwhirl evolved into two forms in theory, but while a poliwrath’s powerful swimming capabilities allowed them to hunt in Kanto’s fast-flowing rivers—and also granted them a niche in the competitive circuit, like with Matsu—politoed favored wetlands, and had been driven west to Johto during the Industrial Era.
And it was probably a metaphor, like she’d said. The politoed, Koichi, or the schoolboy who waved cautiously at a sullen girl in a bowlcut, needed to accept the change as it came, and vanish into myth or zoo as modernization continued to sweep across Saffron.
The look she gave him bordered on pity. “The Marsh District is your father’s ancestral home, for which he was named. I suspect, he, too, carries that part of his home with him when he refuses to replace his ace poliwrath with a more conventional, or younger, fighter. But you are correct; this is a story about the politoed.” Sabrina cast a glance at Cici, who was watching, enraptured and uncomprehending. “The intent had been to leave many of the marshlands intact, as a conservational place, before Fuschia’s safari zone took that role. But the politoed made for poor neighbors: they did not fight their new brethren, but by night they bellowed raucously at the moon. I am told the cacophony was quite unsettling. So the developers took a little more of the swamp, and a little more, hoping to drive the politoed out piecewise.”
She paused expectantly. This part hadn’t been in his lecture, but there weren’t marshes around Saffron today. “And it didn’t work?”
“The rest of the marsh waned. Hemmed in by mountain and sea, the tangela and kangaskhan wandered south, and fared poorly, for they were not migrators. The psyduck went north, and the venonat followed. But the politoed remained, so the marsh grew smaller still. Until, finally, the developers reached the western bank of the marsh, where the salt washed around an enormous rock shaped like a crown. They feared the sturdy stone would damage their machines, so they loaded it up on carts and carried it west to Pewter. And as soon as it was gone, the politoed left, and never returned.”
One of his hands twitched, reflexively, closer to a fist. So they weren’t the politoed; they were the swamp. Somehow, confiding something as trivial as his degree to a former classmate now felt like he’d breached his own trust. “You think we should do the same,” he said hollowly.
“I think,” said Sabrina carefully, “that if the developers had discovered the king’s rock first, they might’ve spared the rest of the marsh.” When Tsuru did not respond, she continued, “Your father’s badge was the first one I earned.”
Tsuru grunted neutrally. There was no shame in pushing a type advantage early.
Sabrina raised one eyebrow. “It took me three tries, and my journey would’ve ended after the second failure had he not encouraged me to return.” She exhaled, gaze drifting briefly towards Cici. “I think he is a great man. I think we are in debt for his tutelage, and there are thousands across Kanto who would feel the same. I also believe there are celebrations to be had in endings, and with them, closure.”
It was a pretty speech, he reflected. “Not your endings, though. Otherwise you should’ve celebrated never getting my father’s badge.”
“I should’ve,” she agreed evenly, fixing him with a look that made it seem like she knew precisely when Tsuru had dropped his own badge challenge. “If that had been where I ended my journey.”
The pit that had been forming in Tsuru’s stomach ever since he’d left Rustboro grew a little deeper. It wasn’t like Koichi to give up on this. Something was wrong, and if even a relative outsider could see it …
Sabrina’s pokégear trilled, and she frowned. Without looking at it, she said, “I will be late soon. Please, consider what I have said. Tomorrow evening, I will be Saffron’s gym leader regardless of what happens. As I am sure you both know, it is a formality, but I think it is important—for him, and all of Saffron—that your father accepts my challenge.”
She waited a moment for Tsuru to reply, and, looking torn when he didn’t, turned and vanished seamlessly into the stream of foot traffic.
When she rounded the corner, Tsuru sagged against the wall behind him, frustration prickling through his chest. It was hard not to feel tricked throughout all of this—by Koichi, by Sabrina, by everyone else. Make his father see reason and close the gym? How could that be fair?
Cici crooned, butting her broad head up against his palm like she normally did when she noticed he was upset.
Startled, Tsuru looked down—the fleshy top of her cap was clammy and cold, not that she appeared to care. “Let’s find you somewhere warm,” he said, shoving his other hand in his pocket. He wondered how he looked now, if being bundled in a coat during what was probably a temperate autumn day marked him as a stranger even before anyone noticed the breloom trundling after him, loudly crinkling her bag. Did they see the same Saffron he did? There was a brightly lit bar draped in neon idol posters; he remembered when it was a dingy ramen shop his parents had taken him too for his eighth birthday. And the nondescript white foyer in the legal office across the street—did anyone remember that it used to be a bookstore with overflowing shelves?
Here, there, now. He wasn’t entirely surprised when his feet led him to his father’s gym. Of all the buildings in Saffron, this was the one that exactly matched his memories, at least in shape. Its clay roof tiles still glistened in the sun, and its rice paper windows were still framed by intricate woodwork. The bus stop outside of its porch had a few new lines running through it, and one of the entryway tiles had been replaced blue instead of black, but that was it.
Cici recognized their destination, and dashed over to it with a triumphant squawk. Tsuru crossed the street slowly, regarding the gym the same way a rattata might circle an injured pidgeot. In his memories the gym had always been stalwart, strong, intimidating. Maybe he was taller, or maybe the secret of its demise buoyed him, but as he trailed his hand across the entryway railing, the stairs seemed short and stooped, the shadows cast in the windows less mysterious.
The gym matched his memories, but the world had gone on.
A boy in his early teens chattered into his pokégear by the bus stop, oblivious to Tsuru. “And his poliwrath! It was so fast, Dad! Flamer was no match for it … The Fighting Master says I showed promise, and should come back next week.”
Tsuru’s heart twisted. There wouldn’t be a next week. People deserved to know that. Koichi couldn’t just keep telling them that things were running just fine, even if that’s what he needed to be true. Reflexively, he reached out for Cici, only to realize she was already inside.
Sabrina wasn’t right about everything. She could’ve remained on her ivory throne at the Indigo Plateau; the rite of succession had existed for centuries and no Champion had ever actually invoked it in decades. But Tsuru had a feeling that, if the gym’s fall was inevitable, she was right. There had to be an ending.
And it was inevitable, he realized, looking over this squat little building that was barely a dot on Saffron’s changed horizon.
His finger hovered over the send button on his pokégear for a moment longer. And then, heart thumping, he watched the message go out:
My father will accept your challenge tomorrow at noon. Tell whoever you need to.The response came almost immediately.
Are you sure.The dilapidated gym loomed over him like a dying tree.
Positive, Tsuru sent back, and slipped the pokégear into his pocket. She was right. He had to convince Koichi. He had to.Tsuru walked into the gym. Cici was already delightedly pestering Matsu by bowing her head in front of him and shaking her tail as fast as she could, a clear invitation to battle that was greatly hindered by the spore bag. The poliwrath, to his credit, sat stoically while the arena’s chansey healed the small burn on his right arm. They were the only ones left in the battle hall, now completely stripped of furniture, and was nothing more than a simple wooden platform flanked by tatami mats for bystanders. The lights had also been dimmed, casting the arena in thick, dramatic shadows: with his stoic expression, the chansey by his side, and the breloom posturing beneath him, the poliwrath looked for a moment like a king presiding over a miniature court.
Swallowing heavily, Tsuru turned to the back of the gym, which served as his father’s office. He froze by the door, watching through the rice paper windows as his father’s silhouette paced back and forth between the wooden lattices. The walls were old and thin, and while his father’s voice was polite, it still carried clearly: “Who’s this? You’re with the news too? Which news?” Pause. “Why? No, there’s nothing happening tomorrow. No. No comment. Please do not call this number again.”
Sabrina had already gotten the word out. Idiot, Tsuru thought, for what must’ve been the tenth time this trip. News flew in Saffron. He should’ve talked to Koichi first.
But it didn’t matter, as the door slid open, with Koichi right behind it, his eyebrows creased in a way that for him might as well have been fury. His expression flattened as he pulled up short in the doorway. “Ah, Tsuru! It’s a bit early, and I need to deal with something. Saffron News Nightly is saying—”
“I told Sabrina you’d accept her challenge,” Tsuru blurted. “Tomorrow at noon.”
“—and they want to know if they bring a camera crew in, if Matsu’s been approved for photography and videography releases! Amateurs. He’s a gym ace, of course—what?” Koichi, who had been sweeping his way over to check on Matsu, pulled up short. He did not turn around. “Tsuru, what did you do?”
And against the rigid angles of his father’s uniformed shoulders, all of his excuses finally felt so flimsy—the boy at the bus stop, Sabrina’s story, the cluttered guest bedroom. The poliwrath who adapted rather than the politoed who left, coming from the same tadpole, making different choices. Those weren’t the real reasons. Tsuru’s voice sounded like it was coming from someone else when it said, “You were going to make a decision you’d regret later.”
“So you decided to step in?” Koichi asked, his voice dangerously level. The three-pokémon court stopped what they were doing, drawn to the sudden tension in the air, and the gym went deathly silent.
“You were acting like nothing was wrong.” Tsuru could already feel the conversation slipping away from him, his words bowing like reeds before cold sheets of rain. This was how arguments with Koichi always went. “But it is. It’s over. You need to let go.”
“Am I not letting go?” Koichi asked coldly, and even from here Tsuru knew his eyes were trained on the empty tatami mats and barren walls. “Should I have bulldozed the building on my way out yesterday? What more is it that you want from me?”
“To believe it,” Tsuru said, but he knew as he spoke that sentiments like that were like spitting into the wind when it came to Koichi. “Dad, you can’t—”
“What do you care about the gym? About this, about us?” Koichi whirled around. He debated much like he battled—the blows were never completely beneath the belt, but when there was an opening they came fast and hard. “Just drop this like you dropped your Hoenn League challenge, like you dropped your fancy math major, like you dropped everything and left this entire country, Tsuru.”
The anxiety Tsuru had felt in his stomach curdled into anger. “I was nine!” he shouted back. “What was I supposed to do, sleep on the punching bags in the dojo? Mom said you didn’t love her any more, and then she moved back home to Nana, and I was a child.”
“And you’re still acting like one, coming back once a year and acting like you know how the real world works.” Koichi didn’t have to shout; when he was angry, his booming voice carried in a way Tsuru knew all too well. “I don’t have a successor, Tsuru. That’s why Sabrina wants this place. Did she mention that in your chat? She thinks it will soon be time for me to pass on the mantle, and she doesn’t think it’ll go to you.”
Tsuru opened his mouth and then closed it. Of course she hadn’t mentioned that, because then he wouldn’t have listened to her. It wasn’t fair. “So it’s my fault then?”
“No, Tsu,” Koichi said, looking old and furious and resigned all at once. “It’s mine.”
Hot, sudden tears pricked the edges of Tsuru’s vision.
“The Kurosawa seat is one of the oldest in the region. We have been a pillarstone of Saffron since before it even bore this name. And it is my duty to be at the end of this line.” Koichi sighed, and when he spoke again his voice was soft, and defeated. “But it will be on my terms. The fall of my family’s legacy will not be a spectacle for the paparazzi. I will not play the part of the unyielding master overwhelmed by the glitz of progress. I will let us end with dignity, quietly. This, I am sure, Sabrina understands. Even if today you cannot.”
A firm but familiar hand clasped on Tsuru’s shoulder, and then Koichi left.
Tsuru slumped down onto one of the tatami mats, swallowing back the thick lump in his throat as best as he could. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Matsu and the chansey looking at him cautiously, two pairs of eyes frozen with indecision. Cici scampered up beside him, butting her head firmly against his palm. He patted her absently, focusing on the green of her hat, which was already faintly browning away to its winter coloration, to distract himself.
“It’s fine,” he said, more to himself than to his father’s pokémon, but they looked away guiltily anyway. “I’m fine.” He was painfully aware that everyone in the room was focusing on him. “Did you still want to spar?”
The breloom pricked her head up, and after an encouraging nod from Tsuru, she clambered up onto the arena. Matsu paused for a moment, bulbous eyes glancing sidelong at Tsuru, and then sank into a formal bow. The chansey shuffled back.
Trilling delightedly, Cici launched herself at her opponent, bagged tail flapping in the wind, pennant-high. The poliwrath took a careful step to the side, and Cici stumbled to correct herself, ducking just under a precise punch in the process.
Tsuru let the sounds of their match wash over him, a sudden sense of nostalgia seeping into his skin. The last time he’d battled competitively had been at Dewford. A different fighting gym, a different smarting loss. His schoolwork was more important, and seven badges was an excellent showing by Hoenn standards, and he’d gone long enough without a successful badge challenge that the writing was on the wall. That was what he’d told Koichi, at least. But Tsuru hadn’t mentioned the part where he’d lost the challenge, hadn’t been able to admit to his father that he wasn’t anywhere close to being a fighting-type master.
Thwap. Cici’s tail hit the ground with a heavy thud, and even though he’d seen it happen several times already, Tsuru still felt a pang of alarm as she triumphantly leapt away without it, her form suddenly mismatched and empty. Not that she seemed to care, instead choosing to use her newfound weightlessness to launch another flurry of punches. After her first molt as a breloom, she’d stopped being afraid of it.
Years ago he’d trained here too. He’d learned discipline and responsibility and honor, sweated beneath the watchful sun of the Kantonese flag, waited at the bus stop with his lips puckered around the rind of an oran berry. There must’ve been one last day where it had all been carefree, before every conversation with Koichi felt like a battle, before his parents’ shouting silhouettes danced across the gym office’s rice paper windows like shadow puppets, before the contents of his childhood room were bundled into a suitcase and a one-way ticket thrust into his hand. Had he valued those quieter days, when it felt like home was everywhere he knew? When had he even thought to miss it?
His gaze caught on Cici’s tail, discarded where it had fallen. He imagined the forests back outside of Rustboro, with their milder winters and their brown boughs full of breloom curling away from the oncoming long nights, shedding the things they wouldn’t need to survive the next few months, quietly confident that it would all grow back one day.
He’d stopped competitively battling years ago. But he’d never met a breloom who spent half the year dreaming of spring.
And suddenly, he knew what he needed to do.
*
The gym was not built for this many people. They made do as best as they could, kneeling respectfully on the tatami mats that were not made for a camera crew, cramming into every nook and cranny. A few reporters narrated quietly into recording devices or cameras. A handful of influencers dotted the crowd. And, twisting Tsuru’s heart most of all, were the group of gangly teens in karategi, bearing a collection of posterboards that together read, THANK YOU MASTER KOICHI.
All of them knew not to touch the wooden arena platform, which was only for the fighting master and his opponent.
Tsuru cast a glance towards the office windows, where his father’s silhouette was so still it might’ve been mistaken for a statue. He had been in the gym when Tsuru had arrived at dawn, and had not moved since, even when the halls began to fill with spectators, an hour before the match was supposed to start. From where he knelt at the head of the room, Tsuru could see the crowd spilling out into the streets.
Saffron had gathered for them, one way or another. There would be no undoing this.
One minute before noon, the back of the crowd began to glitter with camera flashes, shifting like leaves as Sabrina cut effortlessly through, her eyes sweeping through the crowd before returning to Tsuru. If she was surprised that Koichi wasn’t there, she didn’t show it.
Exactly sixty seconds later, she ascended the stairs onto the arena, her shadow cast in four different directions by the overhead lights and camera crews. She bowed at the waist before stepping into the arena, and spoke in a practiced, measured pitch that cut through all other sound. “I am Sabrina, firstborn of the Natsume clan. Triumphant against Wataru of the Black Valley, and his bannermen as well. I bear the eight sigils of Kanto’s lords, and with them I invoke my right as challenger.”
The gym was silent. Tsuru cast one final look at the office windows—Koichi’s silhouette had turned, but it had not moved—and then stood up.
“I am Tsuru, firstborn of the Kurosawa clan,” he declared, feet slightly numb as they touched the polished wooden platform. “I am honored to accept your challenge.” He was painfully aware of the collective inhalation around the room at his words, the clicking of cameras, the hushed sounds of dozens of people narrating his sudden change of events. But the words came easily. “May our battle be witnessed by fire, ice, and thunder.”
Sabrina nodded curtly, unfazed or unsurprised. They both listened politely while the referee announced the rules of substitution and switch clocks. Then: “The gym leader is to send out their first pokémon.”
Tsuru nodded. “Cic—” He cleared his throat. He needed to sound confident. “Cecelia, help me out!” Cici’s pokéball bust open, and the breloom formed on the battlefield, bouncing excitedly from foot to foot. They’d talked about this the night before. It wouldn’t be a close match, but breloom didn’t seem to have a concept for foregone conclusions, and she seemed most excited at the prospect of a new sparring partner.
For the first time since she’d entered, Sabrina looked him in the eye. “Kazumi.” She shifted her hand to the fourth pokéball at her belt and tossed it high into the sky, directing it to return to her with a lazy drift of telekinetic energy. A silvery, wizened venomoth appeared in a burst of red light.
It looks like Natsume is shaking up her roster. With only three pokémon to choose from, this is a serious commitment, but Venomoth’s typing should— Tsuru blinked once, hoping to clear from his mind the throng of the reporters, the constellation of camera lenses glinting around him. This was for the pale-faced schoolgirl in the front row with her machop, for the teenager in the back with his portion of the sign reading THANK, the stiff silhouette of—
The office door slid open, its sound and movement lost in the hubbub of the crowd. But Tsuru had been watching for it the whole time, so when Koichi appeared in the doorframe, their eyes met. Tsuru stood there, his mouth frozen halfway through his first command, feeling much like a stray meowth caught scrabbling around a garbage can. An eternity seemed to stretch between the heartbeats pounding in his ears.
Koichi surveyed the crowd for only a moment, his expression unreadable, before his gaze returned to Tsuru, standing ramrod straight on the arena. Slowly, like sunlight crowning over clouds, Koichi broke into a grin. Go, he mouthed.
Tsuru couldn’t help but mirror the smile despite everything. The faint smell of teak and dust, the rival ahead, the battlefield simultaneously narrowing and unfolding before him. He didn’t regret his choices, but he’d missed the quiet lurch in his chest every time he started a pokémon battle, no matter how long it’d been.
“Mach punch!” he commanded, finding his voice steady as it slipped into familiar vernacular. Triumphantly, Cici darted forward, clawed feet scrabbling against the hardwood.
There was only one way this battle would go. Everyone in the room new it, with the same certainty that the sun would set this evening and the snows would one day come. But not all endings had to be bad, or forever, right?
And when the breloom leapt into the air, eclipsing Sabrina’s thin-pressed lips and Koichi’s grin, Tsuru felt, for a moment, that he understood.
*
Way to bury the lead, BTW--you made it sound like it did just okay. Not that I'm surprised on either count, that you were modest about winning the contest or that this one-shot was well-received. There's a lot to like!