These days nobody cares about having fun, it is all about winning. I promise you, they don't care. A couple of trainers told me as much, and all of them act the same way. Now it's all about dull strategies and finding the next big thing that makes you unbeatable, until some other clown finds a way to beat you. It's all the same, and they made it that way. They ruined it.

But that's not why I left, I just wasn't doing very well. Everyone who saw me told me my heart wasn't in it anymore. My friends told me I was capable of much more, and that I needed to apply myself the way I knew how, but I left anyway. It felt awful, I'm not gonna lie, a little like I was betraying myself. But it's not like I had a choice about it. I hated feeling like that and I still left. That's how I know I had to do it. I remember feeling awful on the plane ride to Unova, where another plane would take me to my home town. My mom didn't even know I was coming back, and I really didn't want to see her and tell her what had happened, it felt like it would be the end of me, like something would stop and never come back. And I also didn't want to see her face, let alone make her feel awful. Anyway that's how I felt during the plane ride.

When it landed and I arrived in Castelia I had a lot of time to kill, a whole day, so I decided to visit an old friend of mine who happened to be in town. I still felt awful though. I think the best way for me to get my spirits up is to hang out with my friends, but at that point I didn't want to see anybody, and I really didn't want them to see me like that. I was going to catch up with my friend only because I knew she'd appreciate it, and I was sure she knew what had happened to me, and that I'd land in Castelia. So it's not like I had much of a choice anyway. Besides, I didn't spend my whole time there feeling awful, in fact I couldn't, because simply being there reminded me of my friends Iris and Cilan, who I once traveled all around Unova with. During our travels we spent a lot of time together on Castelia City. There we met the local gym leader Burgh, who's still kicking it along with his bugs. And I specially remember the time when my sewaddle evolved into Swadloon and helped me get the insect badge from him. I remember I was really excited, both from my victory and from my pokemon evolving. I used to love it when any of my pokemon evolved, and the rush of happiness that I used to get from seeing them transform from one thing to another, like pure magic, used to last me for days, even weeks. At some point I stopped liking it so much, and not long afterwards I stopped liking it altogether. You could even say I started hating it, when my pokemon evolved. Perhaps I started hating how much I dreaded it happening. By the end I hated it, when one of my pokemon evolved, more than everything else in the world. It felt wrong to me. And that's probably why my pokemon stopped evolving. And that's probably why I had so much trouble to get better. But I didn't leave because I was weak. If that had been the case I probably would have left much, much sooner.

Anyway that memory got my spirits up as I walked towards the house where my friend was staying, which belonged to another friend of hers named Caitlin. You may know her as a former member of the elite 4 from Unova. Even though her house was close to the airport the walk felt awfully long to me, I was sort of looking forward to it, but it only took me a few minutes to start feeling the cold. It was freezing. I remember I had these finger-less gloves that I used to wear, which could've been really helpful to me then. Then I almost couldn't feel my fingers, and the cold slowly but surely crept up all the way to my chest. I was only wearing the light coat I'd brought with me, which did nothing to protect me and I had to take very short breaths as a result. I wished somebody had told me just how rough the winter had been to Castelia, but it's not like I was talking to a lot of people anyway. I ended up rushing to get there, I don't know why but I was desperate, and it was not just the awful cold. I honestly didn't care that much about it. I used to love taking walks and being outside, no matter the weather, but now I don't remember actually doing any of that, even when the weather was nice. I don't remember doing a lot of stuff during those days. But it's not like I did a lot of stuff during those days anyway.

I arrived at Caitlin's big house and rang the doorbell on the fence. The entrance was quite far from the actual front door of her house, and the space between was filled with pine trees and this very fancy asphalt path right in the middle. Her family had always been rich, but she was actually very nice. Anyway nothing happened, no one answered, and I thought I'd die from hypothermia right then and there. But then the little speaker next to the doorbell made a noise, like somebody was tampering with it. Then I heard Caitlin's voice.

"Ash!" Caitlin said. She was probably looking at me through a security camera or something. "How lovely to see you, come in, you must be freezing." She sounded happy and surprised. The gates opened and I basically ran all the way to the door, all she probably had to do was push a button or something, but I was only glad I'd get warm. She still took her sweet time to open the front door, I knocked like three times before she opened it and let me in, and I felt the difference from outside immediately. I was really relieved.

"How have you been Caitlin?" I asked.

"You must be freezing dear," she said. Then she started rubbing my arms very quickly. She didn't hear my question, she was always kind of spacey and distracted.

"How have you been Caitlin?" I asked again, louder this time.

"I've been well, Ash," she said. Then she took off my coat without asking anything and put it on the hanger next to the door. "How about you, how are things?" She asked me with this weird inflection, like she knew I had abandoned my training. At that point I knew my friend had told her. My friend knew. I didn't tell her anything but I knew she knew.

"Fine," I said. "How's Cynthia?"

"She's been a bit sick recently, nothing serious. I'd say she's mostly over it, you can see it in her eyes… she's awake right now in the bedroom, I'm sure she'll be happy to see you."

Cynthia had her own room in Caitlin's house, she didn't live there, at least not for the whole year, but the room was hers. She used to travel a lot, like all around the world I mean, like nobody else, and she never got tired either. But that was when I met her, like five years before this. At that point she was still the Sinnoh League champion. She is still considered the best champion there ever was anyway, but she had slowed down over the past couple of years, and she had stopped traveling so much too. She was one of those people that did all kinds of things in many different places at the same time flawlessly, and she still did a lot of things, but you could tell she had slowed down, and she looked different too, although I think you would've had to have known her to have noticed it.

The door was open, she saw me as soon as I tilted my head at the edge to take a peak, and I had no choice but to go in. She was sitting at the top of her bed. I guess technically she was laying down but she had all these pillows behind her, it really was a lot of them. And she smelled like honey, in fact the whole placed smelled like honey, but an old kind of honey. I can't quite explain it, it was like the honey had been watered down before being sprayed all around, like it wouldn't be long before the scent just disappeared. Anyway, she turned her head very quickly toward me, and I took a little step back just from the sudden surprise, but it seemed like she didn't notice it on my face. I kind of regretted going there when I went inside, seeing her like that. It's not like she was sick, not really sick anyway, but just being there made me really sad.

"Ash, come in please," she said. She was watching the big tv right in front of her bed. It was showing a match from the league championship where I supposedly would have been participating if I hadn't given up, assuming I'd gotten the eight badges in time. I was immediately embarrassed, and felt sorry for myself, and for her for being next to me at that moment. She turned off the tv and then coughed very loudly a couple of times, but it wasn't the kind of coughing that you get from being way too sick, the kind you can't avoid. It was more like the kind of coughing you cause yourself to clear your throat, preferably when you are alone. I thought that just from how loud it was, and how pleased she seemed, it was really annoying. I would have gotten mad at her if I hadn't been so sad, she seemed thoroughly enjoyed, like life couldn't get better for her, and yet I felt a bit sorry for her, even though I knew she was more than fine. She was wearing this old black bath robe with her name printed on golden letters on the right side of her chest. You could tell it was of very good quality but it had been through a lot of washings already, and she seemed not to care how it left a good part of her skin bare. Her chest with a good part of her cleavage was showing, as well as her legs and feet. Her legs in particular looked different, from a different color than the rest of her body I mean, like somebody had smacked them repeatedly and had left them all red and swollen. Her face and chest looked much more pale though, but that may have been from the little light that came in through the curtains. Maybe she was still a bit sick, her voice did sound a bit raspy anyway.

"Hey Cynthia, how are you feeling?" I said.

"Much, much better Ash, thanks, have a seat," Cynthia said.

I don't know if she meant for me to sit on the bed or not, but I sat on the chair in front of the desk nearby, and moved it closer to her, facing her.

"I'm glad," I said.

"There's no reason to worry, I would've gotten better a lot sooner if I hadn't plowed through all that ice cream during the worst part of it," she said. Then she laughed to herself, and I accompanied her with a few giggles. Then she turned the tv back on and put it on mute.

"Why aren't you there? What happened?"

"Yeah, I just came back from there," I answered. I already knew she would ask me that, but I decided to visit her anyway.

"No but seriously, what happened? You gave up half-way through."

"Yeah."

She gave me this weird look, very intense, like she wanted to tell me something but didn't quite know how.

"Professor Oak spoke with you, didn't he?"

"Yes he did."

"And what did he say to you?"

"He was rather nice, all things considering. He said I should think about my future, and he didn't get angry or anything. He said that when I start something I should finish it, that I shouldn't half ass things. I mean he didn't say it like that of course. He said that I had to go along with it."

"And you have to go along with it, you can't just not be part of it."

"Part of what?"

"...The world! Everything… what we do, as a society, you have to be part of it."

"No, I know, I do know that Cynthia," I said, just to reassure her. She was getting increasingly intense and I could tell she really cared about me, like she really wanted me to understand. But there was nothing to understand. You can only be a part of it when you're winning. Only the winners are part of it. For everyone else, there is nothing.

"Did Oak tell your Mom you're heading back?"

"No he didn't, at least not yet. He's visiting Birch in Hoenn right now and will go back to Kanto in a week. I suspect it won't take him long to bring it up."

"Have you said anything to her?"

"No, but I'll tell her when I land there tomorrow."

"I know your Mom, she's so nice, she's not going to like this."

"No, I don't think she will."

Everybody always says my Mom's nice, she's very sweet, she's an angel. Poor Ash's Mom, she doesn't deserve this. That's the first thing I thought people would say to me whenever I'd tell them I gave up. I did love my Mom anyway, I just wished people would stop pointing that out all the time. It's not like every single person of the world hasn't done something terrible that made their mothers disappointed, they're all a bunch of hypocrites.

Cynthia sat up on the bed and pointed at the tv. Her face changed, she seemed angry. I suddenly wanted to run away from there. I already knew that would happen, and I really wasn't interested in listening to another tirade directed at me.

"Look at those guys." She moved her index finger as she pointed at a lucario running all around the rocky battlefield, while its trainer shouted from the sidelines. "I've been right there where those trainers are standing right now, I've talked to the local professor, did you know that?"

"I didn't."

"Yeah, I didn't think so, I really didn't think so," she repeated once more. I got really angry at her out of the sudden, I don't think she cared about anything I said, anything at all. She just wanted to lecture me and make sure I understood every word. I hate when people do that, I really do. If that is the case then I really don't need to be there for it, it is more about them than about me. I stayed because she was my friend and because she was older than me, out of respect. Although these days nobody has respect for anything anymore. Maybe I should've just left.

"He told me you weren't so helpful with his investigation, and that you had not made good use of the pokedex that he so graciously gave you."

"I'm sorry he felt that way."

"Are you proud of this Ash?" She asked.

"Of course not Cynthia."

"You knew what you were doing Ash," She continued. "I know you know what you're capable of, we all know it, and we're very proud of you, but all you're doing is wasting your time, don't you care about what's happening to you?"

"Maybe it is just a phase."

"You think so? Is it the phase were you stop caring and just give up?"

"Maybe."

She paused, I bet she couldn't believe my insolence.

"I'm serious Ash, you need to get your head straight before it's too late."

Hearing her say that depressed me, it really did, I didn't want to be there anymore. I stopped listening to her and started thinking about the pokemon I released back to their habitat, politoed, ponyta, smoochum, which I left with the professor, and pancham. Thinking about pancham really depressed me. All he wanted was to evolve, but to evolve he needed to be close to another pokemon, and all I kept thinking was, why would you want that? Then Cynthia asked me something but I didn't listen, so I had to ask her to repeat her question.

"What's in your mind Ash? I'd really like to know."

"Honestly, not much at the moment," I said. I really wished she'd covered up her chest a bit more, it was very uncomfortable talking to her like that.

"I have to go Cynthia, it was nice talking to you. Please don't worry about me, I really don't want to make you worry."

"I just want to help you Ash, I care about you, you know that right?"

"Of course I do, it'll all pass, right?"

"I hope so," she said, very somber like. It didn't feel good, the way she said it, but I still got up and started walking towards the door, before she stopped me. I really wanted to leave, I had that kind of feeling you get when you just can't keep going on doing something, whatever, doesn't matter. Washing the dishes, talking to someone, simply walking, simply continue sitting, you know you have to stop or you'll die.

"Would you like some cake and a cup of hot chocolate? Caitlin and I would love your company," she asked. I wondered if I would have agreed to stay before she ambushed me with the reprimand. It sure sounded like a nice offer, but I was very much done at that point.

"I'd love to, but I really have to go, I need to make sure I won't miss my flight."

She nodded silently, with her sight lost, I felt bad for her. Then she turned to look at me very suddenly, I don't know why but I got really anxious. It felt like she had discovered I had done something I hadn't even thought about, but then she just raised her arms and directed them at me, and after some more anxiousness just from the sheer confusion, I calmed down.

"It was nice to see you, come give me a goodbye hug," she said.

I went over to the bed and she reached over, leaving both of her breasts fully exposed. She didn't seem to care at all, not when I was approaching her with my eyes being attracted to her naked chest, nor when she hugged me for quite a long time. It still went by very quickly, and I felt so weird, and reacted in a lot of different ways, but she didn't seem to care at all. And she didn't even adjust her robe when she went back, I thought it would fall off. I couldn't look her in the eye, but I sensed she didn't give it a thought. I really don't know if she noticed anything weird, but all I could think at that point was that she should have.

When all of this ended, and I mean the whole thing, not just my visit to Cynthia. Anyway, when it was truly over, I told my friend Misty all about what happened to me during those days in Castelia City, right after I gave up on my trip through this weird region half-way. I guess I should have told you, I used to train pokemon, but I don't anymore. Maybe you already knew that, I am Ash Ketchum by the way, sorry to disappoint you. I stopped some time after obtaining my fourth badge. Well, technically it was like my fiftieth badge or something like that, overall, but it was my fourth one on that particular region. Misty used to be a gym leader, but she was one of the good ones, one of the best even. I guess that goes without saying, she's on the elite 4 now, and she's changed a lot, too much I'd say. She is still one of my best friends, in fact she visits me in here a lot, more than anyone else actually. But I just feel like things are not the same as they used to be. I can't really explain why. I guess I liked her better when she was a gym leader, but even now she's better than the rest of them. I still remember training with her and challenging her gym, it was one of the most fun periods of my life, certainly more fun than what was going on with me during the end of my career as a trainer.