Burgundy had already traveled halfway towards Luxuria before the realization that her home no longer existed settled in. Once she had restarted her journey—this time in search of Cilan—she had pushed all thoughts of her parents' move from her mind, barely calling her family once they finalized the move. The already infrequent phone calls had further decreased in number as her siblings began speaking in ICT tinged with Kalosian accents and stopped using Unovan entirely. As if the physical separation weren't enough.
With a sour taste in her mouth, she made her way back to Striaton City, the nearest town with an international airport, and called her parents, who aided her in arranging a flight to Laverre City. How strange it would be, calling a region she had only visited twice her new home.
She stepped out of the airport and straight into the arms of her family—including all the cousins and aunts and uncles she hadn't seen since Ruby was an infant. They crowded around her, pinching her cheeks, commenting on how smart she looked in her connaisseuse uniform, marveling at how much she had grown—Burgundy had to hold her tongue in response. Of course she had grown.
Burgundy had always valued her family and the time she spent with them, but within hours of her arrival she already regretted coming to visit.
Laverre was nice enough—it was a quiet, mostly residential city out in the countryside. The townsfolk admired the local gym leader's skill with fabric—many young girls Burgundy passed in the street hoped to join Valerie's legion of Furisode Girls, who wore beautiful outfits based on Napajian traditional wear. Burgundy admitted freely that the town, with its multitude of trees and natural scenery, was just as beautiful as she remembered.
But that wasn't the point. Laverre and Luxuria were miles apart—both in physical distance and in culture. Luxuria was Burgundy's home—she knew its streets, its people, its schedule. Laverre was a mystery.
It certainly didn't help that no one used ICT, but that could be specific to her family's habits. Her relatives jabbered in rapid-fire Kalosian that Burgundy, with her still-meager grasp of the language, couldn't hope to keep up with. Between her blank looks and explanations of the language barrier in halting, Unovan-accented Kalosian, her aunts and uncles clicked their tongues in disappointment. Reluctantly, they switched to ICT when directly addressing Burgundy for her benefit.
While her siblings—and, to an extent, her cousins—adeptly switched between languages, translating things they thought she would find interesting and explaining jokes, they also poked fun at her struggle to communicate even the simplest of ideas. Burgundy resisted the urge to strangle them all. It wasn't her fault that she couldn't speak Kalosian just as fluently. She didn't live here.
She had studied Kalosian in every bit of spare time she had on the road and could write paragraph after paragraph in her third language, but her lack of listening and speaking skills created a rift. In a room full of family, she remained alone. No one wanted to have a written conversation, after all. That was what letters were for.
In addition, her parents couldn't understand why she switched careers. You've won four badges, they said. Why would you give that up? Burgundy fumbled for an answer. Because she needed something new. Because her new profession originated in Kalos. Because she needed something to keep her mind off things. Because she wanted revenge. All of her reasons faltered under her family's scrutiny.
Learn Kalosian first, her parents finally said. And then you will become un magnefiqué connaisseuse. They asserted that she could not become a great connaisseuse, who relied on words as tools of the trade, if she failed to properly conjugate Kalosian verbs properly.
Yet they said nothing about the PCA, which required no Kalosian. They said nothing when she spoke of talented connoisseurs who never dipped into the Kalosian tongue. C-class? What nonsense!
While Burgundy felt inclined to agree that the ranking system meant little—that crétin was an A-class, after all—she recoiled at her parents' dismissive attitude.
She didn't have the time to devote to learning only Kalosian. And what would she do in the meantime? The PCA would only pay her stipend—the one she used a significant portion of in order to fly out to Kalos in the first place—if she continued her connoisseuring studies. And it wasn't like she would use Kalosian outside of her family.
When she escaped her parents' house less than two weeks after her arrival, fleeing towards the familiarity of Unova, she laughed bitterly. She had worked hard to get to where she was. She worked hard advance her career, too. She spent hours pouring over online textbooks and expanding her vocabulary for the purpose of giving more nuanced evaluations.
She would show her parents and Cilan what she was capable of. She swore it.