Kai walked along the path that crested with a gentle rise along a hill. As Kai reached the top of the slope, Violet City came into view all at once.
Kai stopped walking. He hadn't meant to — his legs just sort of gave out while he took in the view.
It sat in the bowl of a wide valley, framed on three sides by the foothills of the mountain range he'd been skirting for days. The city wasn't enormous, not like Cherrygrove with its seafront sprawl and traffic noise, but it had a character to it that hit him somewhere between the ribs. Old stone buildings lined the main streets, their rooftops tiled in deep greens and slate greys, and the whole place was laced through with tall, thin trees whose branches were just beginning to soften with early spring growth.
The city reminded him of an old Japanese town, then church bells — or something that sounded an awful lot like them were ringing somewhere in the distance, low and rolling, the sound drifting out over the valley.
And above it all, Pokémon.
He could see them from here. Pidgey circling the higher rooftops in lazy arcs, riding the thermals off the warm stone. A Hoothoot sitting perfectly still on a chimney pot. Two Spearow quarrelling noisily over a drain gutter, wings out, beaks wide, acting like they owned the post office. The sky over the city had an ease to it that the wild routes never did. These Pokémon were used to people. They'd grown up alongside them, living here in the city.
Sandshrew had stopped too, just ahead of him on the path. It sat up on its legs and tilted its head, ears rotating slightly as it took in the bells and the distant city noise, its small black eyes catching the morning light.
"That's it, Sandshrew," Kai said, crouching down beside it. "Violet City."
Sandshrew looked at him, then back at the city, then back at him again.
"I know. Not bad, right?"
He'd seen Violet City before in a way. On a four-inch DS screen, pixelated and flat, rendered in two dimensions with a cheerful chiptune track playing over the top of it. But this was something else entirely.
The morning light was doing things to the stone that a screen couldn't capture, warm and amber where it hit the south-facing walls, deep blue-grey in the shadows between buildings. The whole valley smelled faintly of wood smoke and something sweet he couldn't quite place — blossom, maybe, or the wild grass that ran right up to the city's edge in tall, feathery waves.
This wasn't a game, this was real.
"Come on then," Kai said, and the two of them started down the slope.
The city swallowed them up quietly.
The streets near the outskirts were narrow and cobbled, lined with low walls made of stacked dark stone. Gardens sat behind most of them, half-wild, with Bellsprout climbing up fence posts and the odd Sentret sunbathing on a warm step. A couple of older residents were out already, one of them sweeping a path while a Meowth sat in the window and watched with complete indifference.
Kai walked with his hands in his jacket pockets, letting the city show itself to him rather than rushing. He could hear the bells again — closer now, deep and resonant, probably coming from the Sprout Tower he vaguely remembered from the game. He hadn't spotted it yet, but it was hard to miss a building that swayed in the wind.
Sandshrew trotted alongside him without being asked to stay close. It had gotten good at that — reading his pace, keeping a step back when it sensed he was thinking, bumping against his leg when it wanted his attention. It was doing the latter now, nudging against his shin and pointing with one claw down a side street.
The Pokémon Centre was right there.
Kai laughed. "Good eye."
But before he reached the Centre's doors, something else caught his attention — a long, low building set back behind a wrought iron fence, with a wide gravel courtyard in front of it. The kind of building that said institution, without having to try too hard. A painted wooden sign hung on the gate:
VIOLET CITY TRAINER ACADEMY — All Aspiring Trainers Welcome.
Through the fence, he could see that the courtyard was set up for morning activity — cones laid out in rows, a pair of young kids already doing drills with their Pokémon in one corner, a teacher standing with a clipboard watching them. The Pokémon were small — a Caterpie, a Sentret, a tiny Hoothoot that kept falling sideways when it tried to run. The kids were maybe eight or nine, laughing every time it toppled.
Kai stood at the gate for a moment, watching.
He'd never thought about that side of things before. In the game, you just left the house at ten years old and off you went. Nobody taught you a thing. You worked it out as you went, or you didn't, and if you didn't, you just reloaded from your last save. But here, of course, there was a school for it. Of course, there were people who studied and trained and learned before ever setting foot on a proper route.
And here he was, a fully registered trainer who'd been winging it since day one.
I should probably not think too hard about that for now, he thought, and pushed on to the Centre.
Nurse Joy behind the counter had the same look as the other Nurse Joy's he'd met — warm eyes, the same soft pink hair pinned up neatly, the same professional smile that somehow managed to be genuine. Kai had stopped being unsettled by it around his third or fourth Pokémon Centre. Now it just felt like part of the world.
"Welcome to Violet City's Pokémon Centre! Can I help you today?"
"Please," Kai said, setting his five Poké Balls on the counter alongside Sandshrew, who hopped up on its hind legs and placed its little claws on the edge like it was checking in at a hotel. "Full heal for all of them. And if you have any rooms going, I'd like one for tonight."
"Of course! Let's see to your Pokémon first." She ran her scanner over each ball in turn and gave Sandshrew a look that said she'd seen more than a few well-travelled Pokémon in her time. "They've had a busy few days, haven't they?"
"You could say that," Kai said.
"That's absolutely fine. Give me about twenty minutes, and they'll all be right as rain. I'll get your room booked in the system as well — and will you be wanting the meal service?"
"For them and me, yeah." He'd learned early on that registered trainers ate for free at Pokémon Centres. It was one of those details the game had glossed over — you just bought things from shops — but here it made complete sense. The whole system was built around keeping trainers on the road. Feed them, house them, heal their Pokémon. Keep the regions connected.
"Brilliant. Take a seat, we'll call you when they're ready."
Kai dropped his bag in one of the booths near the window and sat down heavily, more tired than he'd realised. The chair was soft. The Centre smelled of antiseptic and fresh bread from somewhere in the back. Outside, a Pidgey landed on the window ledge and looked at him with small, suspicious eyes, then flew off again a moment later.
He watched the city for a while, people and Pokémon moving through the morning with the easy rhythm of a place that knew its own routine.
Twenty-five minutes later, he was sitting at a proper table with a proper hot meal in front of him — rice, something that looked like a grilled mushroom, a thick broth that steamed gently — and his Pokémon were arranged around a long, low feeding tray, each portion sorted by size and species. Nurse Joy's Chansey had done the measuring.
Totodile was already eating like it was a race. Rattata, for once, held back and let the others settle first — something that surprised Kai until he noticed that Snubbull had given it a look that suggested restraint might be advisable. Zubat hung from the underside of the ledge above the tray, delicately picking at its portion in its own private upside-down world. Mankey — still new, still finding its feet among the group — sat a little apart from the others, eating with short, quick movements, eyeing each of the others in turn to map the social order. Sandshrew, as usual, ate slowly and deliberately, as if it had opinions about each mouthful.
Kai ate and watched them, and thought.
His mind kept drifting back to the training academy. Those kids out in the courtyard, being taught how to work with their Pokémon from the very beginning. Being taught properly. Learning about type advantages, battle mechanics, how to read a Pokémon's body language before a fight — all the things Kai had technically known in theory and had been scrambling to actually apply ever since he'd arrived.
And then there was the thing that kept coming back to him every time he looked at his trainer card. The thing that was right there in the absence of a single number.
No levels.
He'd thought about it on and off since he'd first noticed it — since that very first morning in the lab, when Lyra had explained it to him, and he hadn't quite believed what she was saying. The whole structure of the game he remembered, the thing that gave you a clean sense of progress and power, just didn't exist here in the way he'd expected. No numbers ticking up after a battle. No neat calculation that told you your Sandshrew was a 34 and the opponent's Pidgey was a 28, therefore you won.
Here, it was messier than that. Murkier. Real.
Sandshrew had gotten stronger — he knew that much. He could see it in the way it moved, the way its Defence Curl was sharper and faster, the way Rollout had a different kind of weight behind it than it had in those early scrappy battles near Newbark. But was that from the battles? The nutrition? The sleep? The fact that Sandshrew had fought alongside him through enough genuinely scary situations that something had calcified between them — some layer of trust that made it fight harder, smarter?
Probably all of it, he thought.
And that was exactly what the academy was teaching those kids. Not how to level-grind. How to train. There was a difference, and he was only starting to feel where that line sat.
He hadn't trained his Pokémon. Not really. He'd battled them, fed them, kept them healthy, kept them safe. He cared about them — genuinely, in a way he'd never expected when this whole thing had started. But he hadn't pushed them. Not deliberately. Not the way you'd push yourself to get better at something.
He looked at Totodile, who had finished its food and was now sliding its bowl across the floor with its snout for no reason except that it could.
"Oi," Kai said. Totodile froze and looked up, caught red-handed doing absolutely nothing wrong technically. "How'd you fancy doing some actual training this afternoon?"
Totodile blinked at him. Then looked at Sandshrew.
Sandshrew looked back with the expression of someone who had been waiting to be asked this question for some time, standing up as it had finished its food to give Kai a look of determination.
"Well, I guess that settles it. Training starts this afternoon!"