On your way to the coffee shop, you pass a sunburned trainer playing ukulele on the corner. She’s taught her combusken a few dance moves, modified from battle tactics and even punctuated with some pyrotechnics. The performance would be better suited to drums or even a violin —anything more aggressive than a ukulele— but it’s charming all the same. After the chorus, you’re not the only one inspired to drop a few bills into the open ukulele case.
Ah yes, firedancing poultry. That makes me wonder how an Alolawak would react to coming across this sight if there was a background tourist who trained one nearby.
You’re still humming it to yourself as you enter the coffee shop. You pay for thirty minutes of computer time and a caramel macchiato to make the task of checking your emails less… You sigh as you approach the monitor and bolster yourself with a sip of the sugary drink.
Bruh, get a better coffeeshop to leech wi-fi from. >:V
Unless the implication is that the protagonist is buying the caramel macchiato to get a spot and use the wi-fi, though I can’t say that I’ve ever been shooed out the door in the span of 30 minutes when doing that before.
First is an email from your mother, which isn’t so bad. With a little distance — or, okay, a lot — you’ve begun to appreciate her more. Your emails tend not to follow a cohesive narrative, less like conversation and more like volleying stories at each other, back and forth across the void. You like it though. You learn more about her this way than you ever did when you were living at home arguing about the merits of different brands of dishwasher detergent.
I actually wonder if this is meant to be interpretable as the protagonist from Postcard 8 doing this, since we
did see that one right on the verge of setting off on a journey as a trainer… https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/636782104289476608.webp?size=44&quality=lossless
[QUOTE]
She never was a trainer, but she has stories of her own. Her latest email is the story of the time your father convinced her to go skydiving with him and how, no, it did not cure her fear of heights. You know this is her way of saying that your last report had worried her— you told her about the battle from the back of your altaria with a would-be thief, [U]omitting some of the details you knew would upset her[/U] — but that she trusted you.
[/QUOTE]
Oh boy, I see that [I]someone[/I] has been living life on the edge during his/her journey.
[QUOTE]
You trade her the story of your arrival in Slateport, including the ukulele player. The locals walking barefoot, flip-flops in one hand, unbothered by the hot sidewalk. The wingull that tried to steal your lunch. “With love,” comes easily at the end.
After that, there’s an email from the bank, a few from mailing lists urging you to donate now to save this-and-that forest from development, and one from the insurance company. Nothing too scary.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, the “nothing too scary” remark makes me think that this is about to become a jinx.
[QUOTE]
Then you scroll back up to the one that makes your stomach clench just looking at it, the one you knew you’d find waiting in your inbox. Jess wants to know when you expect to arrive in Slateport because she wants to hire a local trainer with a ludicolo to ferry her across the river so she can meet up with you [B]i[/B]n the city, see the sights together. A couple days ago, a reminder: Not sure if you saw my last message…
[/QUOTE]
Well, that was fast. Time to see what about this is so stressful to the protag, since this at least [I]looks[/I] innocent enough.
[QUOTE]
You skim, catch yourself, and drag your eye back to read more carefully. You know what you ought to say, but your hands freeze over the keyboard. Moments later, you catch yourself tying knots in the straw from your drink. It shouldn’t be so hard. It’s only words. It’s only pixels.
[B]Y[/B]ou slurp down the last of your drink and muscle your way through a clumsy explanation of your feelings and, sheepishly, your whereabouts. You end, “With love,” but after staring a moment at the screen you erase it. Then you erase most of what you typed.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, so somebody’s trying to put the kibosh on a relationship. Or at least I [I]think[/I] that that’s the implication behind that mention of “your feelings”
[QUOTE]
Over and over, your gaze drifts to the people sitting nearby. Some look like students. Whatever the contents of your bank account and your inbox, you smile thinking that at least you’ll never be expected to write a paper about [I]The Kanto-Berry Tales[/I]. You wonder if they think something similar looking at you with your dusty boots and scars.
[/QUOTE]
>The Kanto-Berry Tales
That pun is awful. Amazing, but awful. :V
[QUOTE]
To your right is an old man who wears a feather in his cap — a real dandy. You notice with a start that he’s also wearing a trainer’s belt, all six slots filled. He types slowly with two fingers and you wonder who he’s writing to across the void.
[/QUOTE]
Ah yes, I found your old man here minus a few effects:
[IMG]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fe/8b/0b/fe8b0bdd63a3f18afef5b0570a2a5c4c.gif
You accidentally lock eyes with a pair of girls curled up in arm chairs against the far wall. They’re trainers too, possibly waiting for their chance on the computer. You offer a small smile, which sends them waving and giggling, clutching each other’s arms. They’re young — they have neon green and pink hair respectively and in their laps their backpacks are swarmed with buttons and patches and sequins. You shake your head but keep smiling.
Actually, wait, I just realized, but is this computer meant to belong to the café? Since if this is a combination internet café and normal café, that
would explain the time limit. And it probably
would be less of a gamble than attempting to lug along a laptop while going out into the boonies where thar be (pocket) monsters.
When you return your gaze to the screen in front of you, twenty-seven minutes have gone by. Rather than paying for another half hour, you save your email as a draft, promising yourself to finish tomorrow.
Narrator: “He will absolutely not finish that email tomorrow.”
Outside, the sun is beginning to sink. The cars and buildings are cast in sherbert pink and orange. The air is warm and smells like the ocean. Tomorrow you’ll walk the shoreline until you win enough battles to earn back the money you lost in Mauville. Tomorrow you’ll have to figure out how to tell Jess about all the ways you’ve changed. For now, there’s just this.
Watch as Jess just happily comes skipping around the corner in about 10 seconds.
While you wait for the bus that will take you back to the hostel on the other side of town, you watch the people on the sidewalk: lawyers, poets, trainers, joggers, thieves, surfers, and who knows who else. Each of them passes without knowing or caring who you are, and with each come snippets of stories whose endings you’ll never learn. They delight you and also make your heart ache, all those unfinished stories. All those possibilities.
How is it that — even now that you are finally free to go anywhere and do anything you want with your time — you’re still looking for something else, something just out of reach?
Again, this
really feels like bait for the protagonist to just awkwardly run into Jess right about now.
Maybe the beachfront battle scene doesn’t matter. Maybe you should continue on to Dewford, where you’ve heard interesting rumors of caves and tiny islands, each with their own micro-climates…
The bus finally comes. You sit near the back. Fine white sand scatters the floor. At the front, you see the ukulele girl sit, placing on the seat beside her a bulging backpack with the ukulele case strapped to the outside with bungee cords. Go figure. You smile, close your eyes, and lean into the seat back. Only the drumming of your fingers on your leg belies your racing mind.
Oh,
hello, chicken lady. Didn’t think that we were going to see you again from earlier.
For tonight, the noise of other humans is enough to distract you from yourself. As the bus rips through the dark, the hum of traffic and unintelligible chatter and ringtones carries you to a place that might not be home but is as close as you need. For all the thoughts churning beneath… there’s always tomorrow.
Whelp, no awkward run-in with Jess there. The protagonist is safe for another day… probably.
