Mom named me with one wish: that I would never stop fighting.
When I was five-years-old, Mom took me to visit Dad's grave. All of the tombstones in the cemetery were lined up in rows of V-formations, and they stood tall, in a fixed state of attention. At the side of Dad's tombstone was a little tombstone. It read, "His Beloved Noggin." Mom said that Dad had an odd way of naming his Pokemon, but he loved them dearly.
As I processed the sight of Dad's grave, Mom knelt beside me. "Satoshi," she said, "your father sent me many letters while he was on duty. But he never, ever said that he would quit." She must have seen my blank expression, still plastered to Dad's grave. "Do you understand?"
I blocked her out, because I could only think of one thing.
Effaced in great big letters, Dad's grave read, "SATOSHI".
Five years later, I heard Mom bragging to our neighbors that I would finally have my own Pokemon and go on my own journey. "I know he'll become a champion," she said excitedly. "I have to support him all the way, huh?" And they all laughed. It wasn't as though I was totally against the idea, but it left me with an empty pit in my stomach.
Another five years later, I had seen uniformed hooligans led by big men cloaked in cigar smoke, forests that children were sent to wander in, and a broken era left from when the war ended. I learned how to scale mountains with my teeth and how to cross oceans with no-good-reason. When I defeated Shigeru, Professor Oak did nothing but praise me. "You won because you had trusted and loved your Pokemon, Satoshi. Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations." It wasn't as though it was false, but it wasn't true, either. I felt Shigeru's eyes pasted on me. I was afraid he'd figure out that I didn't even know why I won.
I thought it had something to do with my drive. I went on to become the champion in another country. I still felt empty.
I climbed to the top of Mount Silver and looked over the white abyss down below. It called out like an excited rival, or a championship title, or the dirt that covered Dad. The longer I stared, the closer the bottom seemed. And I kept staring, and staring, and staring, and it moved closer...
"Hey!" someone behind me called. I snapped out of my trance and turned around. It was a girl hidden in the snow. Her eyes burned with an obstinate purpose that melted the ice around her. "Do you want to battle?" she shouted.
I sent out my first Pokemon, and it began.
There were colors, multitudes of them, that I had never seen before. I felt it. My Pokemon felt it. You knew that this girl had scaled mountains higher than any you ever had. You knew that if you were crossing the ocean, she would be on the ocean bottom, digging through the sand with her nails. You knew that she felt her place in the universe, and that her life's goal was to fulfill it utterly, and completely.
She defeated me. I stood there, breathless. There was someone who was better than me.
And I felt elated.