White had always told her it was an insult to be called "an actress," that it was originally a term reserved for women who were too dramatic. Actor, on the other hand, had honor, esteem. But Yellow wondered what the problem was with feeling too much in the first place. She had always been taught to let it all out.

Yellow was neither an actor nor an actress. She was a trainer, but when she decided to humor White, to be cast in a commercial with the other Kanto dex holders, she gave it her all. She had no prior acting experience, but this was important to White, and so it was important to Yellow.

The other three, however, did not take it as seriously.

For around three hours, the four let themselves be told where to stand, what to say, and how to feel, but they were still just going through the motions. That's how it always felt with them nowadays, like they had all lost the passion. In their defense, after saving the world more than once, everything else does get trivial.

But it was still different with them now, all of them. And at some during the shoot Yellow had lost track of time – not for how long they had been in Virbank, but for how long they had all just been acting with each other. She forgot when it all changed between them.

Maybe they would have been prepared if someone had told them that childhood innocence and passion weren't mutually exclusive. When you're a child, you think you're going to hold onto your childhood forever. Your favorite stuffed pokémon will be your best friends until you die and you'll never get sick of playing video games and you'll always love to eat candy. You'll always do the things that make you happy. And once you grow up – like you've always wanted – everything imperfect about childhood, everything you were unhappy with, would suddenly be okay. You'd have everything.

The only problem is the scenes change.

Red was her world as a teenager. She loved him more than the air itself.

She still remembered what it felt like when they decided to be in a relationship. It was like every dream she'd ever had was irrelevant because of him. Love does that to you. It makes you think you're invincible, like your life is suddenly complete. With him, that's how it felt. She'd been in love with him since the day they met, and their adventures together only solidified what they had.

And then fifteen years went by and she suddenly wondered how long she had been going through the motions with him.

Maybe it was when she could guess with no margin of error what Red was feeling at any given time. In the beginning, his simplicity was one of the things she absolutely loved about him. But at some point in their relationship it became monotonous. And at some point, when Yellow told herself she loved him, she was just reading from a script she wrote as a child.

At some point in their relationship, Yellow was acting out the only feelings she had ever known, and she didn't realize they had changed. Now she had to acknowledge it. She came to realize she had feelings for someone else.

Even after fifteen years, Yellow hardly knew a thing about Green.

He was different from the other two. Their shared passion was an unspoken one, one that fifteen years of silence couldn't quell. Their passion was filled with side-long glances and awkward silences, with sexual tension and repressed feeling, with a subconscious recognition at how well the other has grown up.

At least, that's how it was for her.

She obviously couldn't be sure about him. He spoke maybe two words to her on each occasion they saw each other, but that was one of the things about him that drove her insane with feelings. Fifteen years and she still hardly knew a thing about him. He never let her in so easily, and maybe that's why he was so attractive to her.

Actions speak louder than words, and Green didn't offer up much of the latter. That had never changed. But still, something between them had changed. The scene had changed. They were older now, and while Green may have never acted like a kid in the first place, Yellow had grown up. Red hadn't.

Yellow sat on the dock of Virbank City for three hours after their shoot. People were starting to stare at her, a few came up to see if she was okay, but these were feelings she'd never had to deal with before, and so she didn't know what to do.

It was surreal – closing the curtain on a relationship she'd been in her whole pubescent life and then some.

But love was just that – learning to close the curtain when you'd gotten all you needed out of a relationship, learning how to stop acting...and to start feeling.

I originally was going to publish this at the beginning of the year when I was all emotional about leaving my family and coming back to school. Now it's the end of the year, and I don't want to go back home. It's funny how fast things can change in five months.

Let me know what you think!