As dawn broke over Harmony City, the streets slowly came back to life.
The wide, well-connected roads filled with the familiar sounds of a city waking up — footsteps, distant engines, the chatter of early risers. Among the morning crowd, a young man and a young woman walked side by side along the pavement, in no particular hurry.
Nova was decent-looking by most standards — the kind of face that was pleasant without being striking enough to turn heads. Aresdra, on the other hand, was a different matter entirely.
White hair, silver eyes, and a sharp black-and-white colour-blocked skirt uniform. She was tall and carried herself with an easy elegance, her features precise and fine, like something carved from pale stone. Even Nova, who had spent years at her side and whose eyes had long grown used to her, still caught himself staring on occasion — a quiet, involuntary double-take that he could never quite explain.
The two walked at a relaxed pace, close enough to look like a couple on a morning stroll. Their destination was the back street behind the Harmony City Pokémon Academy, where a well-known food street had been drawing crowds for years. Nova had decided they would have breakfast there before walking Aresdra back to school to sort out her leave.
Harmony City was a small city within the Norlandia Alliance, but its location made it anything but ordinary. Sitting at the closest point to the Western Plateau and the Tamar Desert, it drew tourists, researchers, and adventurers from across the region every year, all of them curious about the wild frontier that began just beyond the city's edge.
The food street, naturally, was one of the first stops for most of them.
When Nova and Aresdra stepped onto the street, the sheer number of people hit them immediately. Every stall was packed. The servers weaving between tables with loaded trays looked like they were barely keeping up, and more than one of them had the glazed expression of someone who had long since given up wishing for extra hands.
Aresdra's brow furrowed slightly at the noise and the press of the crowd. Nova, by contrast, looked almost comfortable.
He had grown up somewhere far louder than this in another life — a crowded, bustling country where scenes like this were nothing out of the ordinary. Standing here now, it felt less like chaos and more like something familiar and oddly warm.
Watching the red-faced workers hustling between tables, Nova felt a small, tired smile pull at his mouth. No matter what world you found yourself in, somebody always had to do the hard work.
"What if we just eat at your school cafeteria?" Nova said, glancing at the queue snaking out of the nearest stall. "We could be waiting here for a while."
Aresdra gave him a look. "You finally come back, and that's the best you can offer? The cafeteria?"
Nova laughed at her expression — somewhere between offended and resigned. "Come on, I practically grew up here. It's not like there's anything on this street I haven't tried before."
Aresdra seemed to soften at that. She was quietly weighing whether it might actually be better to head back to school first when a voice cut through the noise.
"Hey, you two! Handsome guy, pretty girl — I've got a free seat here and way more food than I can finish. Come eat with me! My treat!"
Nova blinked. He glanced over at a short girl sitting alone at a small table, waving them over with an easy grin.
A free meal from a complete stranger, just like that?
Nova's first instinct was suspicion. He had spent too many years in a world where that kind of offer usually came with a catch. Nearly a decade in Harmony City had softened some of his edges, but not that one.
Aresdra, on the other hand, was already smiling. She thanked the girl warmly and tugged Nova by the sleeve toward the vacated space before he had finished processing what was happening.
It was only once he sat down and properly looked at the table that Nova understood.
The surface was covered in small dishes of street food — skewers, dumplings, grilled things on sticks — and in the middle of it all, propped against a sauce jar, was a phone running a live stream. The built-in camera was pointed straight at them.
Nova glanced at the comment feed scrolling across the screen.
"No way, she actually got a beauty to come sit down??"
"That girl in white — what??"
"Sorry, lady on the left, could you move a little? You're blocking the view."
He pieced it together quickly. The two of them must have wandered into the girl's frame while standing on the street, and the viewers had spotted Aresdra immediately. The comments had done the rest.
Nova looked sideways at Aresdra. She did not seem the least bit surprised. He supposed that made sense. A face like hers attracted attention whether she was looking for it or not. This probably was not the first time something like this had happened.
The girl across the table grinned and gave a small wave at her phone. "Right, I should introduce myself! I'm Jacinth Hall — just call me Jacinth. I'm a travel blogger. My big dream is to make it up to the Western Plateau and film everything I can find up there."
She tilted the camera toward Nova and Aresdra with an expectant look.
Nova scratched the back of his neck. "Uh — I'm Nova. I'm a professional Pokémon Trainer."
Aresdra followed without hesitation. "Aresdra Cortana. I'm studying Pokémon Performance at the Harmony City Pokémon Academy."
The comment section erupted.
Professional trainer. The words carried weight, even said as casually as Nova had said them. In the Norlandia Alliance, becoming a professional trainer was something most people dreamed about from childhood. The gap between dreaming and doing it, however, was wide — held open by talent, money, timing, and any number of other things that got in the way. For the vast majority, the dream stayed a dream.
Professional trainers were not rare, exactly — a large city might have thousands of them. But a random young man strolling down a food street on a Tuesday morning, carrying that title like it was nothing? The comments section had opinions.
Then Aresdra's introduction landed, and the reaction was even louder.
Pokémon Academies were specialized institutions established by the Pokémon League across the region. After finishing their general schooling around age fourteen or fifteen, students in the Norlandia Alliance faced a fork in the road. Those who leaned toward conventional paths — whether by circumstance, talent in other areas, or simply personal choice — continued on to standard high school and eventually university. Others enrolled in Pokémon Academies, where the coursework centered on battles, training, and performance.
Aresdra was in the performance track. After graduation, she would be able to enter Pokémon Contests and similar competitions, traveling with her partner Pokémon and building a name for herself in that world.
That was what had the viewers so worked up. A girl who looked like that, studying performance — the comments were already writing her future for her.
"With those looks, she'd absolutely dominate the Contest stage."
"Contests aren't just about looks, though. A Pokémon's Condition and moves matter too."
"Who said her Pokémon isn't strong?"
"Forget that — what's the deal between her and that trainer? Are they together??"
"Does it matter? They watched the sunrise together this morning and now they're having breakfast."
"...I didn't need to know that."
Nova's mouth twitched. He looked away from the screen.
Jacinth, looking a little flustered, angled the camera back toward herself and gestured at the spread of food on the table. "Anyway — help yourselves, seriously. Don't be shy. I'll order more if we run out!"