My name is Hilbert.
This piece of crap you'll be reading is a sort of journal about my life.
Don't expect to like it. Trust me.
I'll just cut to the chase and get into this.
…
I was a pretty messed up kid when I was 8.
Wasn't exactly the eloquent type. Learned curse words pretty early on, and was pretty open about that fact, even if my delivery was less than mature.
"Hey shit-heads!"
And that understandably got me a fair share of strange glances.
"You wanna fight, huh? You crap-turds think you can take me on?"
I was constantly trying to pick a fight, get some attention. But since every other kid has some dumb excuse, like being too young or too old or just my being an unpleasant force of nature to them, no one would take up my challenge. As a brat, I thought that translated to being the superior warrior in their eyes, even though looking back on it now I realize that I just wasn't worth the effort.
"I'm the king of town, this town of Nuvema!"
Didn't stop me from making a big deal out of it anyway.
While I wasn't the brightest kid, had a passion for getting the attention of people through any stunt I could pull off. Through that, I developed a surprising knack for making things. A regular day would be me going out into the woods by the lake and building my own play-weapons. None of them ever came out the way I wanted, though. You know, actually dangerous and potentially harmful to anything other than a pile of dirt.
I'd make a stumpy fort out of logs and branches, call it my castle and sat under it, even though the thing was a rainy day away from collapsing right on top of me.
And while I did feel superior, I also felt hopelessly alone.
Months went by when I'd walk to my castle and patrol around it like some kind of guard dog with nothing of worth to really guard. My parents were hardly ever around and we're never the most supportive people in the first place. I wasn't even old enough to have my own Pokemon yet.
So there I was, alone. Lying on the ground. Pathetically crying into the dirt for some attention... a friend... any sort of companionship, really. And I laid there, complaining as to why I didn't get any of that, despite being the reason being painfully in front of me.
"Hey-o! What's yer name?"
Until that fateful day…
"Huh? W-why d'you wanna know?"
"Just cuz."
"Oh! Uh...well...uh… you say your name first!"
...when I met her.
"Ok, my name's Hilda!" She said with a cute smile, dirt all over her face.
…
Didn't take long for us to become what some would consider close. Hilda had just recently moved in from another part of the region, and she was apparently trying to make new friends. Not that it worked, since once she became friends with me, most of the other kids avoided her due to association.
My attitude and swearing didn't seem to bother her in the slightest, though. At first I thought it was because she liked me, but now I'm pretty sure she was just trying to be nice. Despite that, she had a very commanding yet kind presence. She made me and every other kid in her vicinity want to listen to every word she said.
Which made it weird to me that out of the countless lifelong friends she could've made, I was the only one she ever hung out with. Which simultaneously boosted and lowered my ego in many ways.
"Hey, you shouldn't sit under there. It's better if you don't get hit with a bunch of sticks."
Her small doses of advice probably saved my life more times than I'd like to admit.
"Oh, uh...ok." I obeyed.
It rained the next day, causing my stupid castle to collapse.
I'm not entirely certain since I was so young, and I might've just been excited over any sort of company to think straight…
…but I'm pretty sure I had a big crush on her. Wasn't me who told you though.
"Hey Hilbert, What wrong with your head?" She asked.
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"
"That looks like a cut."
Sure enough, there was a tiny gash on my forehead that was caused by a recent stomping fit in the bushes.
"Hm? Oh this ain't nothing!" I acted bravely, even though the pain was starting to seer just after the injury was pointed out to me.
"Lemme see…"
She walked in front and put her hand on my forehead, and I immediately tensed up.
"I SAID IT WAS NOTHING, OKAY?"
She giggled at my fear.
"Oh, hold still ya big goof. I'm not gonna hurt ya."
Even though she couldn't make many human friends besides me, the wild Pokemon in the area quickly gravitated towards her, and soon she had a posse of 3 Lillipup following her wherever she went in a single-file line. She even numbered them off.
"You're number 1…" She pointed at the first pup, which wagged its tail in delight.
"...number 2…" She pointed at the second pup, which sniffed her finger in slight confusion.
"...number 3…" She pointed at the third pup, which tried to bite her before she quickly retracted her hand.
"...aaaaaaaaand, you're number 4!" She said as she pointed at me.
"Hey!"
I was somewhat annoyed by that.
"Why am I below them?" I asked.
She giggled.
"Cuz they don't bark as much, silly!"
Despite my aversion to this ranking, I begrudgingly accepted it. I would walk behind number 3 in the line as we went on our marches through the woods around town.
"Hildaaaaaaaa! Number 3 keeps shitting on me!"
We shot the clock, if that's how you say it, spending everyday finding new ways to entertain ourselves. Barking at people, stealing things, giving back what we stole for an exchange of the high price of giving our furry cohorts belly rubs.
And while the adults in the area were probably uneasy about a off-kilter kid like me hanging around and bothering people, Hilda became pretty popular with them thanks to her being a lot gentler and more reasonable in certain scenarios, almost as if they were happy she was there to reign me in.
"Aww, would you look at that! Hilda made this bracelet from the beaded necklace Hilbert broke! How sweet!" An old mother said.
"She found that old vase Hilbert broke and fixed it! Now it's better than it was before!" A young father mentioned.
It wasn't long before it became clear where we stood in their rankings. Not that I minded, really. I was happy as long as she was happy. And while she kept me from going too far with many of my pranks, it was clear she enjoyed them just as much as I did.
"I'm gonna use this bait to lure a bunch of Patrats into the old coot's front yard, then he'll go crazy and chase em all around town!" My grinning face explained as Hilda watched from a distance.
"And will anything get broken?" She nagged.
"Yeah yeah…"
"Hilbert!"
"Ok fine! I won't put the bait anywhere dangerous and make sure they don't eat something that somebody might miss."
I said that thinking she wanted reassurance that nothing bad would happen. I was mistaken.
"Well what would you do that for?" She said as if she was questioning my sanity. "What's the point of doing this if nothin cool comes out of it? LET THESE LITTLE MONSTERS LOOSE!"
Her expression was intense and her gaze filled with cartoonish blaze.
I just kind of stared back in awe.
At the time it seemed strange how she'd be so willing to jump to my wild ideas, even adding her own input at times. But I was happy to know that her perfect-posture exterior wasn't impenetrable.
"GAH! Dammit-"
As planned, the old coot got his rose buds nipped and was scouring the place for the oblivious rats as we both laughed until our lungs gave out.
It felt like the five of us ran the place.
Together.
And as the months went by, slowly but surely, I started swearing less. And slowly but surely, I got further up the line. Until, slowly but surely, I was walking next to her.
"Ow! Hey Hilda! Number 3 won't stop trying to bite me!" I practically danced out of the way of the Lillipup's teeth.
"Well maybe if you stopped throwing rocks and poking him into bushes he wouldn't be so mad."
She picked up the pup and cradled it, tickling its belly and teasing.
"...well maybe I'd stop poking it if it wasn't begging for you to carry it all the time…" I mumbled.
"What was that now?" She peered over in my direction. "Are you jealous?"
"W-what? Course not! That's creepy! ...I think." I quickly retorted as I frantically tried to hide my stated grievance.
To my surprise, she simply giggled and skipped off as I was left starting back at her.
At the risk of sounding creepy, I'd say that everything from the laugh on her face to the skip in her step were mesmerizing to me. There were times when I couldn't look away from her.
And her smile. Her smile was the first thing I'd seen that my now 9-year old brain could call beautiful.
Those days were...perfect. That's the only way I could describe them.
"Okay, fine. You get some pats too." She chuckled as she messed up my already disheveled hair."
Perfect.
Apparently, perfection isn't meant to last though.
About 10 months after Hilda had arrived in Nuvema, we had gotten to the point of walking together in front of the Lillipups while we talked about the stuff happening around town. We found ourselves on top of a tall hill that had a sudden drop near the end with a good view of the route and even of the neighboring town.
"So this kid moving in today is a nerd? With glasses an'junk?" I asked. I was playing around with some sticks and a rubber band.
"Kinda. I don't know that much about him." She explained.
"But aren't you from the same town?"
"Yeah."
"..."
She seemed like she wasn't going to delve further into that backstory.
"Alright, as long as he don't cause any trouble, I won't mess with him." I said, the confidence of authority that I didn't have backing my words.
She giggled at that.
"You cause more trouble than any other kid here, Hilbert! Does that mean you haft'a mess with you?"
And just like that, she twisted up my brain.
"Well I mean… I don't… I didn't… he… … shut up!"
She laughed at my suffering stammers before pointing at the contraption I had in my hand.
"So watch'a making this time?" She asked. "Is it another slingshot?"
"Yep."
"Really?" She said, unenthused. "Come on, Hilbert, this is like the bujillionth time you've tried to make one. When are you gonna learn that you can't make a stupid slingshot with just a bunch of twigs?"
I smiled slyly.
"There's more than one way of doing things, even if you have the same things you started with." I said.
I thought that sounded smart, despite my limited vernacular at the time.
Proceeding to pick a stone off the ground, I placed it on the band, and stretch it back...
Took a deep breath in...
...And let go, sending the rock through the twigs and flying into the air, before landing unceremoniously onto the ground about 2 meters away.
I looked back at Hilda, and we both grinned evilly.
We started hunting down targets to shoot at.
I was now in front while Hilda and Numbers 1 and 2 kept at my back. Number 3 was still sleeping back at Hilda's house.
While I wasn't even very aware of it myself, I was constantly watching Hilda's movements, making sure nothing got close to her. I was at that stage of life where I had a habit of being a bit physically over-protective, a pretty short-lived trait of mine, all things considered.
I aimed for the limited amount of Pokémon in our area, making sure I didn't shoot at one that could hurt us.
Didn't hit any of them, obviously. And looking back, I think Hilda was actually more glad for it.
"What're you doin' now?" I asked her.
"I'm helping this little guy out." She said, tending to the wounded Patrat.
"What for? I didn't even hit it." The concept of random, baseless generosity was lost on me at that age, and still kind of is.
"Who says I can't help them out when I want to?" She retorted.
I scoffed back before turning the other direction. "Please, why should I care about a bunch of animals?"
Either out of genuine disinterest or slight jealousy of not being catered to like that myself by Hilda, I decidedly chose to take nothing away from that conversation.
I'd end up regretting that, because it was the last quiet one we ever had.
I was walking back when I realized Hilda wasn't following me.
"What's wrong?" I heard her whimper behind me, along with some angered growling.
"Oh no."
I started running back as fast as I could. As I did, in that brief time, so many thought clouded my brain. I don't know why, but my brain suddenly started filling itself with scenarios of Hilda being badly injured, thrown off the cliff, etc.
"What happened?"
"Was she hurt?"
"Who hurt her?"
"Are they still there?"
"Can I make it in time before something bad happens?"
"Has something bad already happened?"
"What do I do?"
"What do I do?"
"What do I do?"
"What do I do?"
So much information...and nothing but baseless instinct to act on it with. I was panicking so bad that I'm not even sure if what I saw was even what happened.
...
It was a large dog, a Herdier, about to jump on Hilda with sharp teeth and claws at the ready.
And almost like an...animal...my vision went completely blank save for one thing, the thing I was trying to get away from her. I probably sprinted faster than I feasibly should've been able to.
Then I blindly kicked something.
…
I could practically hear the vivid thumping of blood throughout my body, from my shivering fingertips to my sore ankles. My breathing, practically swallowing the air.
I had stopped.
I looked over to my right. I saw her. She was sitting down, likely haven fallen over. Immediately I scanned her arms and shins for any scratches. When I saw she was fine, my body started to loosen. My breathing started to slow down and the adrenaline poured out of my body as for a brief moment, I started to relax.
Then I looked up at her face.
Up until this point, the only kind of faces I remember seeing were ones of confusion, boredom, annoyance, and very rarely contempt. Hilda was the only person to show me anything different. Show me what someone else's smile could look like.
And she was also the first one to show me what being utterly horrified looked like.
She stared, unblinking towards the direction I'd kicked the Herdier.
While hesitant, my human instincts and curiosity would have me look the same way.
…
In front of us was a few feet of grass and foliage, then a rather sudden drop down to the land below.
...
While it wasn't exactly in my awareness at the time, I've come to realize I have a habit of imagining a variety of ways in which an event could play out. Whether it's out of anxiety or because of how often I'm forced to live entirely within my own head, it happens. Sometimes my made up predictions had a level of truth to them.
I shuffled my nervous way to the edge of the cliff, not speaking a word, barely breathing in fact.
Hilda got up and sidled behind me.
We both peered over the edge to see the long drop down.
And there it was.
The Herdier.
I couldn't see it very clearly, hopefully because it was so far down and not because of it being mangled to the point of not being recognizable.
"I-it…" Hilda's eyes started to tear up, likely from the strain of her not shrieking out of horror.
Meanwhile, my brain was working at light speed, trying to piece together something...ANYTHING, to lessen the gravity of the situation.
I'm not exactly proud of my thought process looking back on it.
"It should be fine, right? That couldn't have been enough of a drop to kill it. Is it dead? It can't be. How weak would something like that have to be for a drop this short to kill it? This drop that's… really high up now that I look at it… but who cares, right? Who cares if it's dead? It was trying to hurt Hilda! I'd do it again if I had to! … but how would she react to this… how would my parents react to this? Maybe I can come up with an excuse or… something like that… or… or…"
"It's not moving."
I looked over at Hilda.
And now I couldn't even read her expression properly.
Maybe she didn't know what to feel.
Maybe I was just to shaken to parse how she was feeling.
Either way, I picked my next words carefully.
"Maybe we should… bury it?" I mumbled.
"Huh?" She looked over at me in surprise.
I looked back at her, merging our eyelines together.
She looked at me weird. Really weird. Like I was a completely different person than I was before.
Her eyes had that similar tint of horror in them from before as she looked directly into mine.
She was scared of what was standing in front of her. More than the mess that was laying at the bottom of the cliff.
I felt my stomach cramp. Not from the tiredness as a result of my earlier stunt. It was hurting me from the inside the longer I stared at her expression. Like I was trying to kill myself every second her terrified expression burned its way into my memory, gnawing at my insides like some sort of poison.
And just like that, I had no idea how to feel either. My brain was aching just as much as my stomach and arms and legs, just from the mass of what I was trying to process yet wasn't able to. Parts of my mind were at war with each other. Some over how to proceed from these events. Some trying to process how to take Hilda's reaction.
There was even a part of me that was actually mad at her. Furious.
"I just saved her! Saved her face from being bitten clean off! And now she looks at me like I'VE done something wrong?"
Is what that part of my mind was screaming. Thankfully, the rest of my consciousness punched the other part in the gut as I went into moving forward and trying to comfort her.
I never got the chance.
We heard a loud shriek come from the bottom of the cliff.
We quickly looked back over, still wary of the drop in front of us.
At the bottom of the cliff, next to the mess that remained of the Herdier, a little kid was fallen on his backside. The scream had likely come from him.
And he was wearing glasses.
He couldn't stop stammering. And with us on top of the cliff and definetely not willing to make the jump ourselves, the two of us could only watch to see what he did next.
The kid adjusted his glasses, probably trying to call himself down. If that was what he was trying to do, it didn't work in any metric, because he dashed off in a fit of terror and sobs.
Which left us in an even more awkward position than before.
"That was Cheren!" Hilda was the first to act. She started running the other direction from where we came.
"Hey, where you going?"
She simply stopped in place in response to my call, and, without turning around, spoke her answer.
"To help him, obviously."
Her answer itself made enough sense on its own. But the way she said it made it sound almost...sarcastic. Like she was trying to puke the words in my direction despite facing away from me.
Before she could continue running, I grabbed her by the arm.
She froze.
I froze.
She stared at my hand.
She pulled away so fast I almost fell over.
"What is it?" She asked with the fear of a cornered animal.
I wanted to say a lot of things to her. Help her feel better, help her feel less scared. Less scared than I was.
But that was pointless now. It was clear that the state of the Herdier wasn't what scared her.
I stared at my shoes for a half-minute.
My worn out sneakers. Torn in multiple places from prolonged usage, and for being too small for my feet. Laces strewn about because I never tripped over them like that, so tieing them just seemed like busywork. In fact, there was a massive hole between the sole and the rest of my right shoe that wasn't there before, likely caused by my earlier stunt. There were scratches that weren't there before too.
I looked up.
I wanted to connect our eyelines again, but Hilda was looking off to the side, hand to her face, one knee bouncing, likely thinking and impatient.
"Well?" She asked.
I knew what I had to ask, but for some reason the stream getting the words from my brain to my mouth was being clogged and separated.
"I just want you to promise something." I finally connected the stream.
She finally looked back into my eyes, questioningly.
"Do you…"
I didn't want this.
"...promise not to tell anyone about…"
I swear I didn't want this.
"...what just happened? What I… did?"
To this day I have no idea what could've been going through her head in that moment. And her response didn't help that at all.
"Okay."
Nothing more than that. A simple a-okay. Not sure what I wanted, but I guess that wasn't quite it.
"Do you promise Hilda?" I asked again, in a more demanding tone.
She looked scared again.
"Please..." I asked, more desperately, what would be the worst request I've ever asked of any person in my entire life.
"Tell me the truth."
…
…
…
"I promise."
…
…