Things have been rough lately.
In the last week, a lot has changed. Sam got accepted into this... clan, I guess, full of people who believe and want to hunt down legendary and mythical Pokémon, such as Arceus, Jirachi, Groudon, Reshiram... But everyone knows what the ultimate goal is : Mew. That was their clan's dream; to catch Mew. And it turns out that the group leader was Richard Trevelton, the disconnected brother of Madam von Platter. She did talk that he was obsessed with finding Mew...
I was completely against the idea of Sam joining that club, so I ranted about it to Arthur and Spark. But they just yelled at me, telling me that I should be at least supporting Sam for following his dreams. So I yelled at them back, and I regret everything that I said then, because Spark shocked me really good... I haven't talked to them since...
Not just that – last night I had a nightmare. I dreamt that I was in court, with Vivico being the judge. I was the accused, and Arthur was the accuser, with Spark being his lawyer and Kirlia being mine. When court went into procession, it can be immediately seen that Arthur, Spark, and the jury all bombarding me with 'evidnece' of harmful words, verbal harrassment and unnecessary violence. It continued on to the point where Kirlia gave up, and I was pronounced guilty. Suddenly I fell into a hole, and I continued falling and falling and falling and falling –
And then I woke up. So I write all this down, just to say this :
Someone help me.
That was the note I showed Kirlia just now, still early in the morning, sunlight barely shining through the apartment window. Kirlia just read it, her eyes skimming through the words, her eyebrows raising occasionally. Eventually she finished and handed back the note to me. "Well?" I asked her a bit shakily. "Wh-what do you think of it?"
Kirlia just sighed. "Be honest with me," Kirlia said sternly. "you told me that you didn't write this, even though this was written from your perspective, has your dream, has your signature... and yet you didn't write any of this?" I nodded. "If that is true... then this is most certainly an odd happening..."
"I-I swear Kirlia, I d-don't remember writting any of it!" I was starting to sweat, rubbing my paws together nervously. "Please tell me there's a logical explanation for this..."
Kirlia thought for a minute before replying. "It could be a note written by your subconscious."
I was fairly confused by her statement. "My... subconscious?"
"Yes, your subconscious." Kirlia repeated. "Perhaps you were guilt-ridden by everything that has happened, and unawaringly wrote this without much thought. Or you could have been sleep-writting. That is just my thought, of course."
Since I didn't have any other explanation for this, I accepted her theory, not wanting to think that a stalker trying to scare me wrote that note. "A-alright then..." I then threw the note into the trash bin. "Is Arthur awake yet?"
Kirlia looked at the sleeping Azumarill, whose head was resting against Spark's body. "No, not yet." Her red eyes scanned me top to bottom. "You want to apologize to him, don't you?" I looked at her, annoyed, thinking that she read my mind again. "I didn't read your mind, I swear. It's been pretty obvious during these past few days."
I just sighed, slumping down on the cold floor. "I-it's just been so difficult..." I moaned somberly. "I keep saying things that sound insulting. I can't help it; I don't like feeling 'I'm happy for you'. My relationship with Arthur and Spark has plummeted down a lot in a single week. In fact, I think Arthur doesn't even consider me as a friend anymore..." An angry tear escaped my eye and slid down my cheek. "Why is this so damn hard...?"
"It's hard to be friendly when you've had a bad past with someone." Kirlia said, reminding of the pain I felt in the cinema back then. "I understand your problem. You don't want to appear like a weak person, but that doesn't mean you have to be so insensitive."
"I don't like being too kind either!" I kicked the glass window with my front legs in frustration, but instead of a cold hard thud, the glass suddenly shattered into thousands of shards, fragments raining down. Me and Kirlia jumped back just in time to avoid the sharp fragments. Kirlia stared at me in disbelief, her glare burning through me.
"Wh-what was that for!?" She yelled at me. I've never exactly heard her get angry before, but I think she's fairly dangerous when she is. "I know you're upset and all, but did you have to break the window!?"
I shook my head, panicked. "Wh– I didn't... But..." How the heck did I smash the window. A normal kick shouldn't have broken it! I didn't put that much power into it either...
Sam, Jonathan, and everyone else in the room woke up with a start, alerted by the sound of glass breaking. When Jonathan saw the broken window, he went nuts. "THE WINDOW!" He screamed, running over. He was grinding his teeth in frustration, followed by Sam, who was just watching. "Why, when I find out who did this..." His eyes darted towards me and Kirlia. He looked between me and her, calculating. "YOU TWO DID THIS!?" He yelled, furious.
He then gave this really long crappy speech about discipline and all that crap and how we should be behaving better and blah blah blah, you'd rather listen to it at all. In the end, Jonathan punished us by not giving us breakfast, while the others get more than enough to eat. Kirlia just sighed at his decision. "Couldn't he be more reasonable?" She groaned. "Like, at least give us a pellet or two?"
Arthur, who saw us not eating anything, offered Kirlia a handful of pellets, which she gratefully took. However, he seemed reluctant at giving me any. I just looked sadly at him. "A-Arthur..." I started. "I-I know that I've been treating you wrongly lately, b-but... Give me another chance, please?"
He thought for a moment, but shook his head. "N-no, Keith..." He said, looking down at his feet. "You've said that a lot of times before... but you never kept that word. You changed ever since... that day..." There was a sad look in his eyes, a look that broke me inside. "You've never been the same since..."
"Arthur..." Vivid images popped up before my eyes as I recalled the day he was talking about...
...
It was the day after Arthur took me to watch that devastatingly and traumatically sad movie, and he asked me to accompany him to go watch a movie called 'The Sword of the Vale'. Before yesterday, I was actually all hyped about that movie. But now...
"What do you mean you're not coming!?" Arthur said, taken aback. "You said you were gonna come with me!"
"I-I'm sorry Arthur..." I told him, not looking at him directly in the eye. "It's just... I don't feel like it..."
"B-but you promised..." He gave me a sad face that made my heart wrench in guilt. I tried to shake the feeling away.
"I-I can't Arthur... Maybe next time...?"
Arthur just smiled weakly at me. "You... you promise?" He held out his paw to make the handshake promise; kinda like how humans do pinky promises.
"I promise." I told him, shaking his paw. "Well... I'll see you later then..."
I walked away from him. After a few seconds, I looked back at him. I saw him looking sadly down at the road, a tear slipping out of his eye. With a heavy breath, I saw him slowly turn and walk away from the cinema, tossing away the two tickets he was holding. One was for him and the other one... was for me...
...
"You've made so many similar promises since that day." Arthur said, snapping me out of my recollection. "But you've never kept any of them. In fact, it started to spread into your daily life, and you were developing a much more... miserable and violent attitude... I didn't even recognize you back then... You were... nothing like the Keith I used to know and love before..."
Arthur slowly walked away, leaving me and Kirlia quietly eating a few pellets. After a while, Kirlia spoke up. "Why don't you show Arthur that note?" She suggested. "Maybe that'll show him that you still care for him."
Following Kirlia's advice, I walked over to the trash bin and dug my paw into it (yuck), searching around for the note. It wasn't long before I pulled out a piece of paper that I assumed was my note, but when I opened it, I realized that it wasn't mine. It was typewritten, and had a signature at the bottom: 'Arthur'. My eyes lingered on the name. Arthur wrote this? When? It must have been during the times Sam was AFK on his computer sometimes, stopping to eat or nap. Arthur must have used it to write and print this.
I started reading it:
Every day, it was just him and me, playing and hanging out. We never spent two hours alone, we were always glued to each other. Sometimes he would go awhile to get me something, or sometimes we would go together. We were... insperable.
But then one day, we went to the movies together. When I came out... he didn't. At least, not 'the' him. I never saw him again since. Sometimes I would go to that place again, hoping that he would come back; the real him, walking out through those large oak doors. But nothing ever happened.
I miss him...
I miss the days when we would play tag with our friends together...
I miss the days when we would tell each other ghost stories...
I miss the days when we would roll around in the grass and count stars with each other...
I just want to be with him one more time...
Even if it was just for a day...
Even if it was just for an hour...
Even if it was just for a minute...
Even if it was just for a moment...
I just want to spend one last time with you... together... with the real you...
With love, Arthur
As I finished reading the note, I noticed that it was rather wet. I realized that it was from my tears. I gasped in disbelief, blinking. I'm... crying? I thought that I made a promise never to cry again... No one saw that! ...Right? I looked at the others. Jonathan and Sam were bickering, while Arthur, Spark, Adam, and Vivico were having small talk. Good, they didn't see me cry like some baby. But still... Arthur...
Looking back at the note, I noticed that it was crumpled up. Perhaps Arthur decided to discard it because he didn't want me to see it or something similar. But the word choice... He must have poured his heart and soul into it, because Arthur would never say something like this in real life. It's small, but it packs a punch. It's... touching...
Realizing what I was thinking, I shook my head. No, why am I thinking like this!? You're not some guy who listens to feelings, feel all these... emotions! PATHETIC! But isn't it exactly what I'm supposed to feel? That book on friends I read says that it's normal and completely okay to sympathize with someone, and yet I feel that it's wrong. Ugh, my head hurts... I have such a split personality...
Sighing, I walked over to Arthur. His ears twitched as he heard me coming, looking at me. At first he didn't look too happy, but then he saw the note I held in my paw. "O-oh." He mumbled, his expression softening when he spotted it. "You... you found my note..." What surprised him even more was that tears were streaming down my face, dripping onto the floor. "Keith, are you... are you crying?"
"I-I-I'm so sorry Arthur..." I whimpered, sobbing. "I-I know that you're j-just trying to be with me, as a... a friend, but... I've ignored that for so long that... that I f-forgot..." I looked at him straight in the eye. "I... I realized th-that... a-and I wanna start over, I wanna be friends again, b-because... without you, I... I'm nothing..." More tears streamed down, making my sight blurry. "I-I know that y-you probably don't want to believe or t-trust me on that matter any more, b-but... I've become l-less, s-something inferior without your friendship to guide me. S-so please... Forgive me Arthur, I w-w-want –" I could no longer continue as I started choking out more tears to the point where I couldn't speak anymore. Arthur just stared at me. Surprisingly, he walked over to me, rubbing my back a little.
"Keith, I do want us to be back together again." He said to me. "But... How can I be sure that you won't be like last time you said that?"
"...Tonight."
Arthur stared at me. "What?" He asked, confused.
"You, me, and Spark; the three of us. Tonight, out at Furret Park." I told him. "I know how much you ch-cherished those old times w-we played together at the parks: the swings, the slides... everything. I wanna... I want to go back to that time again... and catch up with you..." I was a sobbing, stuttering mess, begging for his trust.
Arthur looked at me thoughtfully and nodded. "Alright then..." He finally said. "I'll tell Spark." I thanked him for taking up my offer, and he smiled and walked away.
Maybe tonight's the night... I thought to myself. Maybe I can finally fix what I've done to Arthur and Spark with my ignorance for the last four years... Maybe, just maybe, we could even be best friends again... I looked at Adam, thinking whether I should invite him or not, but I shook my head at the thought. No... he has too much resentment towards me that he'll slap me the moment I ask. Maybe some other time..." Finally, I let out a heavy sigh, and climbed onto the desk to nap in its corner...
...
...
That night at the park, around a quarter past six, Arthur and Spark finally came. I wasn't sure that they would come, especially Spark, but here they are. I looked somberly at them, cracking a small relieved smile. "You came," I said, breathing a sigh of relief. "I... I wasn't sure you would come..."
"Like I said, I want us to be back together again." Arthur said, smiling. "So? Are we gonna play or what?"
"...Let's play."
For the next entire hour we played all sorts of games: tag, hide-and-seek, the swings, the slides, the roundabout; everything! I sat down on the swing, rather worn out. I saw Spark walk towards me and sat down on the swing next to me. He stared watchfully at me, his yellow Shinx eyes shining in the moonlight. "Four years, ya know?" He said to me. "Four years you were a grumpy old Vulpix who wouldn't give shit to anyone, and suddenly you're back to Mr. Cheerful... Why? Did a rock hit you and you finally regained your senses?"
I laughed. "Sort of." I replied. In the corner of my eye, I saw Arthur, playing happily on the slide with a Furret. "I want him to be happy again... for his sake and mine."
"So you do care," Spark said, looking at the Azumarill as well. "and all this time I thought you were blind on both eyes."
"Just one, Spark..." I said, chuckling. "Just one..."