You step out into the night air, shivering as a chill wind rushes past. The door closes softly behind you, and for a moment, everything is still- the faint glow in the eastern sky, the twinkle of the last remaining stars, the empty Rustboro cobblestones before you, and the heavy weight of two Poke Balls on your belt.
Quickly, you wipe the back of your hand across your eyes. They sting.
...
You didn't think your journey would start like this.
Scrambling down the apartment steps, you hit the street at a run, nearly losing your balance as you take off past the rows of windows. It feels even colder, now, and you keep your head down. You don't look back.
Does anyone, really?
...
It's strange, after all. The beginning of a story. Can you say for sure that this is where it starts? Isn't there a journey that leads to this point, as well? Steps that bring you in different directions, leading down roads that all blend together and form endings and beginnings and everything in between- who knows what's really the source?
Maybe it begins on your tenth birthday, as it does for so many others. The day you step into the Trainer's School, but look on with envy at the other students, battling and laughing in the courtyard. Or maybe it's when you first see the untamed routes and forests and fields that stretch away from the path, and you feel the cold, harsh thrill of knowing that, for the first time, no one in the world is looking out for you.
It could be the moment you set your eyes on foreign lands, the sunny shore hiding the danger you'll find there. It could be when another Trainer challenges you to your very first battle, neither you nor she knowing how that decision will echo into the future.
But in a way, your journey truly begins long after those moments, when a young Pokemon turns his back on you and walks into the darkness, and you begin to understand what it really means to be called 'Trainer.'
In another way, it starts here. With the cries of bird Pokemon ringing in your ears as they greet the morning, and a house rapidly fading into the distance behind you, and a silent city that watches from above as you stumble forward into the rest of your life.
Your fourteenth birthday. The day you don't say goodbye, and the day you can finally say these Pokemon are yours. The day you make your first mistake.
Coincidentally, it's the day you learn that Professor Oak of Kanto has been declared missing.