Chapter Two - Strange Déjà Vu

After a day on the road and a night under the stars, the traveling party arrived in Lumiose City mid-morning the next day. As they waded through the sea of people and Pokémon and made their way toward Clemont's house, Serena found herself imitating the tourists who clogged the city streets. Captivated by everything she saw, she craned her neck all around, astonished. It was far from her first time seeing Lumiose City, but it was the first time she had ever seen it so beautiful. The grand alleys shone a warm gold in the soft sunlight of autumn. The trees along the avenues dotted the urban landscape with yellow and orange. Stray fallen leaves tossed about in the lazy breeze. All around, people wore heavier clothes than Serena had seen the last time she walked these streets. Scarves, hats, and coats filled her sight.

Ribombee, prone as always to breaking free from her ball, zipped through the streets overhead at a ludicrous pace, ricocheting from one exciting new thing to the next. Watching her from below, Serena wanted to smile, but she found it impossible. This was not the first time she had arrived in a city that seemed to be made of gold. At the time, her two weeks there had felt like the most tumultuous of her life. She sincerely hoped that history was not about to repeat itself.

When they arrived at Clemont's house, Serena was led upstairs to a familiar room, one in which she had stayed before. She found it in much the same state as the last time she saw it. Precarious stacks of boxes towered from floor to ceiling, all of them overflowing with electrical parts. Tucked away in one far corner of the room was a lumpy cot, one which had undoubtedly failed to become any more comfortable in the few months since Serena had last slept on it.

What had changed, though, was that there was now another cot in the room, much closer to the entrance. Around it was a perimeter from which all of the various junk in the room had been cleared, although it was not clean. It had been replaced with a different kind of mess. Serena was confident what she was looking at before she noticed them, but the pair of roller skates left no doubt.

Looking a bit embarrassed, Clemont scratched his cheek as he spoke.

"Well, again, it's not much, just like last time," he said. "I'm afraid you'll be sharing it this time, though."

Serena shifted her eyes from Clemont to Korrina, who was leaning on the doorframe with her arms crossed.

"We're roomies!" said Korrina. "Unless you wanna bunk with Bonnie, anyway."

A devious grin grew across Bonnie's face. Serena tightened her grip on her bag. She looked dolefully at Korrina, who smirked.

"I'm sure we'll be fine together," said Serena.

"Right on," said Korrina. "Sorry about taking up all the good real estate in here, though. We'll have to work on that."

Serena looked at the lumpy cot in the corner again and frowned when she realized that the path she cleared to it the last time she was here had since been filled with even more boxes and parts.

"I, uh, may have undone some of your work to make room for myself," said Korrina, shifting her stance and trying to conceal an awkward laugh.

"Not to spring too much upon you as soon as you've arrived," said Clemont, "but the state of this spare bedroom is one of the reasons why my father was so keen on offering you a job."

"It was?" said Serena.

"Yes," said Clemont. "You see, this room has become something of a warehouse for my father. All of these parts belong to his shop's inventory."

Serena's eyes widened. Though it was mostly due to her newfound appreciation of the size of the mess, she had to admit that she was surprised to hear that Clemont was not the source of it.

"I'm… supposed to clean up all of this?" said Serena.

"Eventually," said Clemont. "I think my father will be able to fill you in on the details far better than I can. You'll have to ask him about it later when he gets home. In the meantime, feel free to move around as much of it as you need to make yourself at home."

Serena grimaced. An ocean of metal and cardboard separated her from her bed, growing wider by the second. Her heart sank. This wasn't going to be easy.

"Well, I'll leave you be," said Clemont. "I suspect you're eager to get settled in. Bonnie and I need to head to the gym to take care of a few things this afternoon, so we'll be heading out again shortly. Korrina, you're welcome to join us, as always."

"I'll pass on watching you do paperwork, but thanks," said Korrina.

"Very well, then," said Clemont. "I'll see you both this evening. Ready, Bonnie?"

Bonnie pouted and crossed her arms.

"Why do I have to go? It's not my gym! You're just gonna sign a bunch of papers! It's so boring! I wanna stay here!"

"I need your help looking after the Pokémon," said Clemont. "Some of them are much more cooperative with you these days than they are with me."

"That's because you've been too busy with Korrina to pay attention to them!"

As if Bonnie had delivered a collective slap to everyone's face, the room went silent. Clemont promptly turned red. With one hand behind her head and an awkward smile on her face, Korrina looked aside. A moment later, when Clemont looked to her in apparent desperation, she stuck the tip of her tongue out at him and then laughed.

When Bonnie joined Korrina in laughter, Clemont deployed his Aipom Arm. Bonnie's laughter echoed down the hall as Clemont dragged her out of the room. Korrina remained in the doorway until Clemont's footsteps dissipated down the staircase.

Bewildered, Serena stood there, motionless. There was nothing unusual about what she had just witnessed. She tried to remind herself of that, but it seemed that her body had no interest in listening to her mind. She couldn't understand it. Her heart was racing. Her face was tight. She couldn't remember the last time she breathed.

Determined to think of anything else, Serena instead turned her attention to planning the easiest route through the mess to her would-be bed. Before she could make any progress, she jumped when she heard Korrina's voice.

"Those two are adorable."

Serena turned around and saw Korrina walking toward her own cot. She sat down on the side of it and continued to speak.

"I really am sorry about all this mess. I know it's gonna be your job and all, but I didn't mean to make it harder for you."

Serena shook her head. She used the momentary silence to draw breath again.

"It's not your fault," said Serena. "Didn't you only learn I was coming a few days ago?"

"Yeah, but still!" said Korrina, leaning over to pick up a stray shirt from the floor. "I swear I don't keep my own room this messy. And your room was way neater than mine, trust me."

There was a silence that continued for several seconds longer than Serena intended. Her mind came skidding to a halt. There was something awfully familiar about all this, like she had seen it once before, although not quite in the same way. She had once been present for a roommate introduction similar to this one. She had been the one in Korrina's seat.

Serena swallowed. It was nothing. It was meaningless. She drew breath.

"I'm really not a clean freak," said Serena. "Trust me, it's mostly because my mom would lecture me if she came into my room and found even one sock on the floor."

"Ha! I feel ya," said Korrina. "Totally been there. The lesson never really got through my head, though. In one ear and out the other, you know?"

"Oh, definitely," said Serena. "Although, right now I kind of wish I had listened more. Some of my mom's organization tips would really be handy."

Korrina shrugged with one shoulder and held up her hands like they were scales weighing the pros and cons.

"Well, hey, you don't have to worry about any more lectures here," said Korrina. "And it may not be my job, but I'll help you as much as I can!"

A thought occurred to Serena.

"So, you're staying here, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Why didn't Meyer offer you the job, then?"

"Technically I'm still employed," said Korrina. "Being a gym leader is supposed to be a full-time job. You can get away with having a side gig if you run it as part of your gym, but the Kalos Pokémon League really doesn't want their gym leaders to have other jobs outside of their gyms. They say it's because they want us to be focused, but it's all just a bunch of legal junk. If I took another job outside of my gym, I would have to resign as the Shalour City gym leader."

"But they're okay with Clemont leaving a robot to do his job?" said Serena. "And you, too?"

"As long as the job gets done and there aren't any rules being broken, I don't think the league cares," Korrina said with a shrug. "Having a robot do your job isn't against the rules. Clemont checked. Twice."

"Huh," Serena said flatly, unsure what to make of it all. "So, how long have you been here?"

"A few weeks," said Korrina. "It took Clemont a few tries to get the prototype of Korrinabot working right. Once I was sure it was good enough to run the gym without me, I left and came here."

Korrina let out an exaggerated yawn and stretched deeply before flopping down on her cot and propping up one leg.

"It's great here," she said. "It's been fun! It'll be even more fun now that you're here."

Serena's lips tightened for a moment.

"I... hope so," she said. "I've made things a lot less fun everywhere I've been recently."

"No need to be so down about it," said Korrina. "You can have a fresh start here! Honestly, I think I kinda needed one, too. It's been awesome with just me and Lucario here."

Serena gripped her bag and felt her four Poké Balls resting in the bottom of it. Ribombee, at least for the moment, was behaving. Serena feared the avalanche of metal and cardboard Ribombee would surely set off if she bounced off the walls in this room.

"I've got all of my Pokémon with me, though," said Serena. "I'm not sure I would have wanted to leave any of them behind."

"Oh, I didn't want to, either," said Korrina. "I just had to leave a few of them with Korrinabot to run the gym. I wish they were here with me. I couldn't leave Lucario, though."

Through the fabric of her bag, Serena felt Delphox's Poké Ball. It was warmer than the others, almost imperceptibly so. Would anyone else have been able to sense it? Was the warmth even there at all? She wasn't sure. She was even less sure if she would have been able to make the choice Korrina made. She wasn't certain what sounded worse - leaving behind all of her Pokémon, or leaving behind all but one.

Her heart skipped a beat when she remembered that Ash did that all the time. It skipped another beat when she realized what a hypocrite she was.

She left him behind. She almost left Delphox with him.


Serena's intent was to talk to Meyer before going to bed that night, but as she learned, he routinely stayed late at his shop. Her attempt to stay awake and wait ended with her falling asleep with the light on and not waking up until the next morning. To her good fortune, Korrina seemed completely undisturbed by this, sprawled out on her cot and snoring loudly as Serena left the room.

The scent of burnt toast lingered in the kitchen, but Meyer was already gone. Clemont informed her that this was typical, at least on the weekdays. Seeing no better option, Serena dressed, devoured a piece of bread with some jam on it, and headed out the door with an address typed into her navigator tablet.

Fifteen minutes later, she tucked the tablet into her bag as she stood before a run-down building with dozens of secondhand devices filling the windows. The sign above the door had several letters missing, reading as Me's Electroncs.

Had the door not already been wide open, Serena wasn't sure she would have dared to enter. When she stepped inside, she was greeted by a strong scent of burning plastic and a stronger sense that the shop had seen better days. Aside from a cash register atop a counter, it was impossible to identify which parts of the shop were meant for what purpose. The vast majority of the floor space was occupied by even more towers of overflowing boxes like those in the spare bedroom. The innards of disassembled devices were strewn across every identifiable table, workbench, and countertop in sight. Aside from the devices on display in the windows, everything was at least twenty years out of date, if not more. Next to the cash register, a crackling old radio played at an obnoxious volume. Serena guessed it was at least as old as her mother, maybe older. On a workbench near the back of the shop, a gigantic old TV played the news on mute. In addition to the pair of antennae affixed to the top, it was also covered in assorted unidentifiable parts. Serena could not even begin to estimate how much it weighed.

She stopped for a moment to take a closer look at what she was certain was a video game console from well before her time, a quaint and comically large box of yellowing plastic. She ran her finger over it, wiping away a trail of dust. Before she could clean off her dirty finger, she was interrupted. Meyer's Ampharos emerged from the back room carrying a box.

Serena hid her hand behind her back and attempted to discreetly wipe the dust off on her skirt. With her other hand, she waved.

"Oh! Hello!" she said.

Ampharos did not reply but instead set the boxes it was carrying down on the ground and hurried back into the back room. Confused, Serena allowed her hand to hover in the air for a few seconds before abandoning the gesture and letting her hands fall to her sides.

Tentatively, she took a few more steps forward toward the rear of the shop. Then, she stopped in her tracks as she was startled once again. A booming voice came from the back room.

"A customer? My goodness, why didn't you say something sooner?! We have to hurry!"

A few seconds later, a large, bearded man clad in overalls emerged from the back room in a sprint, skidding to a halt. His eyes met Serena's. They both stared for a few seconds.

"Um, hi," Serena said, raising one hand for a tiny wave of greeting.

Before Serena could retract her hand, she yelped as she was wrapped up in a crushing hug. Meyer's massive arms pulled her off the ground. When he spoke, he sounded as though he was so overcome with joy that he was on the verge of tears.

"Serena! You made it! It's so good to see you again! Thank goodness you're here!"

Serena tried to respond but found that Meyer had squeezed all the air out of her lungs. Instead, she squirmed. Meyer eventually released her.

Face-to-face again, Serena heard Meyer sniffle as he wiped away what appeared to be actual tears from the corners of his eyes. Though it was hardly the first time she had met the man, she still didn't understand him at all. As she had seen every time he interacted with his children, he was moved to tears by the strangest and most innocuous things. That already very long list now included her having the decency to show up on time for her first day of work, apparently.

While Meyer wiped his face with a very dirty rag he pulled from one of his many pockets, Serena caught her breath and found her manners. She bowed her head to him.

"It's good to see you again, too," she said. "Thank you so much for having me. I don't know how I can repay you for your hospitality."

"You're welcome, but really, the pleasure is mine," Meyer said, stuffing the filthy rag back into his overalls. "I'm so happy to have someone to help around here. And to have you back with Clemont and Bonnie, too!"

Meyer folded his arms, his eyes looking all around the shop. Serena followed his eyes, once again taking in the staggering size of the mess in which they stood. A nerve twitched somewhere deep inside her stomach. She wished she had known what she was getting into beforehand.

"Things have been getting kind of out of hand around here, as you can see," said Meyer.

Serena nodded. It was a massive understatement.

"Things just haven't been the same ever since Clemont and Bonnie went on the road with you and Ash," Meyer continued. He gestured toward one of the many towers of spare parts. "I never had any problems with inventory building up like this because Clemont was always using them for his experiments. And I know you know how often those explode."

Serena nodded more vigorously.

"These days, he's more interested in more… stable devices," said Meyer. "That, and he's been so busy with his gym and with Korrina since he returned that he hasn't even put a dent in using up any of the parts I collected while he was away."

"You collected all this stuff for him?" said Serena.

"Well, yes, but actually no," Meyer said, scratching his cheek. "I've always picked up people's spare and unwanted electronics. Old stuff, mostly. But these days, it seems like there's more of it than ever to find and less than ever to do with it. Hardly anyone has a TV like that anymore, you know?"

Meyer gestured with his thumb toward the gigantic old TV playing on mute. Serena took another look at it. She recalled having one like it when she was very young, maybe. The memory was hazy at best. Still, there was something awfully familiar about the faint, barely perceptible, incredibly high-pitched whine the old TV constantly made.

"Everyone's throwing these things out, but most of them still work! Between here and home, I've got enough CRTs to start my own used TV shop. And that's only the tip of the iceberg."

Meyer shoved an arm into a nearby box and pulled out what looked like an antenna with an unidentifiable ball of wires dangling from it.

"Radios, old computer hardware, game consoles, you name it," said Meyer. "I don't even know how much of this stuff I've got! That's where you come in."

Serena gulped.

"Clemont mentioned something like that about all the boxes and parts in the spare bedroom," she said.

"Yes indeed!" Meyer said, dropping the mystery object back into the box. "Eventually, I want to clear out that room and get all of that stuff organized here at the shop. For now, we have to focus on here. There's hardly any room to move around in here!"

Serena nodded, grimly.

"So, I figure the easiest way to make more room in here is to get stuff out of here. That's what I need your help with, at least today. I've got some deliveries to make, but I'm swamped here with all the repairs I have to do. So, I'd like you to make those deliveries for me! You'll find all the packages stacked up by the back door."


A short while later, Serena found herself in the strange position of wandering through the streets of Lumiose City with a long list of addresses in her pocket and a variety of small packages tucked into a sack over her shoulder. She wasn't exactly thrilled about the situation, but she figured that since Meyer's shop could probably be condemned due to the extraordinary fire hazard it posed, anything that kept her outside was probably for the best.

Her outing lasted several hours, taking her all around the city. As she discovered over the course of her deliveries that day and the next few days, Meyer's business seemed to consist mostly of him performing minor repairs on modern electronic devices while collecting old ones for no apparent purpose. As the week progressed, when Serena wasn't delivering repaired phones and laptops to various people throughout the city, she was neck-deep in a sea of electrical parts.

Aside from the overwhelming feeling of not knowing where to start with organizing Meyer's mess, Serena's first week on the job was surprisingly pleasant and mostly uneventful. In a way, it reminded her of being at home, with hours and hours whiled away in mindless pursuits which seemed to have no end. The work itself was far more pleasant than farm labor, though. Her days of sweating and getting covered in dirt were replaced with days of wandering around the beautiful city for deliveries and listening to Meyer's ancient radio while sorting parts behind the counter.

At least, Meyer's radio was pleasant whenever he stepped out of the room and Serena got the chance to turn the volume down. She never saw him do it, but somehow the volume always got turned up again before too long.

The job's greatest benefit, though, was what happened after hours every day. Instead of hiding away in her room and collapsing immediately from exhaustion, every evening featured some new adventure with her friends. When Serena eventually fell asleep every night, she was exhausted in a good way. The only trouble was that it was often later than she intended. Her outings had a tendency to run long, but she couldn't complain. The entertainment value of watching Korrina attempt to teach Clemont how to roller skate was more than worth a late night.

The only unfortunate occurrence of the week was when Meyer asked her to come into the shop to make some deliveries on Saturday morning. Serena was relieved to see that there were fewer deliveries to make than usual, and Meyer assured her this was not to be a regular occurrence. And so, when Serena finished making her deliveries by midday, she found herself alone on another picturesque autumn day.

On her way back to the shop, Serena stopped at a roadside food truck and acquired lunch, in the form of a cone filled with some unidentifiable food-like substance. For a while, she sat on a park bench picking it, gazing at the colorful trees and tossing bits of it to the flocks of Fletchling and Pidove which gathered on the sidewalk in pursuit of crumbs. There was a bit more of a chill in the air than usual. She felt the bite of encroaching winter air in both her nose and her toes. The strangers passing by all seemed to be dressed more warmly than she was. For a while, she wondered if maybe Korrina had a coat or something she could borrow, but after considering it, a thought occurred to her.

She wasn't exactly broke, after all.

A short while later, Serena stopped in front of a boutique and wandered inside. Immediately, a familiar feeling came to her - a feeling that she wasn't supposed to be in such a place. Her cobbled-together outfit of ill-fitting hand-me-downs could not have been more different from the chic attire on display all around her. She feared it made her stand out as though she were wearing a neon safety vest, doomed to be escorted out of the building by security in a matter of seconds for trespassing.

But Serena meandered from the front door into the forest of racks undisturbed. No one ever came to bother her.

Left alone, Serena picked through the racks for a while, considering her options. After several of her more recent visits to boutiques, it felt bizarre to be in one alone. So bizarre, in fact, that when she heard something rattle on the shelf behind her, she gasped and spun around expecting someone to be hovering over her shoulder, watching her.

There was no one there. The sound was nothing more than the rustling of some hangers caused by bumping them with her bag. There was no pair of eyes hovering over her shoulder, real or imagined. There was no one waiting in the woodwork to jump out and accuse her of her crimes. There was no Aria, no Palermo, no Lillie. There was no one, and Serena felt strangely and acutely alone.

She considered the skirt she held in her hands for a moment, then looked up. Was anyone there at all? Had the store simply emptied without her noticing? No, that wasn't the case. It took her a few seconds of searching, but a cashier remained at the front counter, absentmindedly scrolling through something on her phone. Serena wasn't sure whether or not to feel relieved that the girl was a stranger. A part of her wanted to believe it was someone she knew.

She examined the skirt once again, then frowned and put it back on the rack. There was something missing. Not just from the skirt, but from everything. Things weren't right. What was it, though? Loneliness? She saw her friends every day now. She hadn't had so much fun in months.

Serena circled around to the other side of the rack and caught sight of a mirror at the end of the aisle. When she approached it, the only reflection in it was her own. Like ghosts over her shoulders, she remembered the sight of seeing Aria and Lillie with her in similar mirrors, far away. It felt a world away now. It strained her mind to believe it had only been a few months.

She couldn't decide why it all bothered her so much. Was it the silence that permeated the store, so deafening that she couldn't hear the anodyne pop music playing endlessly over the intercom? Was it the emptiness, the resounding echo of months of self-imposed solitude that seemed to make everyone around her disappear? Was it fear, the lingering dread of everything she had done being aired to the world? The thought of it made her pity Aria. The idea of all her mistakes being caught on camera made her stomach quiver.

Serena knew the answer, though. As she held a shirt up in front of herself in the mirror, she looked herself in the eye for a moment, then closed her eyes and exhaled a deep sigh.

It was regret.

Dissatisfied, she placed the shirt back where she found it. Dirty, rotten, useless cliches ran through her head. Live your life with no regrets. Too late for that. She crossed her arms and creased her eyebrows as she continued her search. Everybody always said to have no regrets. Nobody ever said what to do once you had them.

How were you supposed to get rid of them? Was it even possible? Serena doubted it. How was she ever going to make up for the things she had done? There was no way to undo them. She could not un-read Lillie's diary. She could not un-extort Aria. She could not un-tell the lies she had told. She could not unbreak everyone's trust.

And yet, somehow, the world collectively decided she deserved a second chance. It made no sense to her. What was she supposed to do? Was she supposed to pretend nothing had ever happened? Was she supposed to simply go to work and not cause trouble and wait for Ash to return and hope for the best? The thought of it made her scoff. How could she just get away with everything in the end? How? Why? Why was this what she got when she had inflicted so much worse on others?

Serena hated it. She hated it all, and she hated the clothes in the boutique most of all. She left without buying anything, and she journeyed from store to store all afternoon until she finally found a place selling something she liked.

After hours of searching and trying on dozens of outfits, Serena stood in front of a mirror in yet another boutique, dressed in new clothes from head to toe. She scrutinized every detail, feeling more and more cautiously optimistic by the second. It was different, for sure, but that was what she liked about it.

She wore a thick yet form-fitting sweater that was covered with horizontal black and white stripes, with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Along with it, she wore a black pleated skirt which stopped a few inches above her knees, dark gray tights, and black flats. Around her neck hung a red scarf, standing in sharp contrast to everything else.

She pondered it all for a moment. She fixated on her hair. It was growing longer again, now down past her shoulders. It was precisely the wrong length for her to do anything she wanted to do with it. So, she pulled it back into a tight ponytail. It was oddly satisfying. The only thing amiss was what she used to secure it. Ash's ribbon was long gone, claimed by the sea. She had to use a simple hair tie instead.

The only thing stopping her from buying it was how different it was from everything she had worn before, but that was also its greatest appeal. It was only after a great deal of hemming and hawing to herself about it that Serena realized the sun was setting, and she hurried to the counter to pay and make her way home.


Serena was at first not enthusiastic to find Clemont, Bonnie, and Korrina all in the kitchen when she entered the house, but the reaction she received to her new outfit quickly put her concerns to rest. Bonnie fawned over her, Korrina told her she looked awesome, and Clemont chimed in to say he was inclined to agree with the assessment. As such, Serena's second week on the job got off to a good start and continued in much the same way the first had, albeit with more time spent sorting parts in the shop due to a couple of rainy days.

It was midday on Thursday when the weather cleared up enough for her to go out for deliveries again. Pleased to see the sun for the first time in days, Serena was more than willing to take an extra-long route and spend some additional time outside. As such, she spent the afternoon traveling all over the city, taking the opportunity to visit some of the less-traveled roads along the way.

Feeling peckish and eager for a break, Serena stopped at a café in a quiet alley. When she entered, there were only a few patrons inside. A rather businesslike woman sat at the counter, scribbling in a notebook. An older man sat in a secluded booth, only his balding head visible over the top of his newspaper. The scratchy sound of what Serena assumed to be a record played somewhere in the background.

Serena took a seat beside the window. By Lumiose City standards, this was a quiet neighborhood. Across the street, a woman pruned the dying flowers in her window box, with a rather distraught-looking Flabébé hovering next to her. A man on the sidewalk swept the fallen leaves into a great pile, a Gogoat steadily chewing on them. Near the end of what she could see of the road, the postman slipped an envelope through the mail slot of someone's door.

Serena's heart fluttered. It had been almost two weeks since she sent her letter to Ash. Had he received it? If he had, surely he would not have sent another letter to her house. She had not heard from her mother about any mail arriving for her, so perhaps that meant he really had received it. There was no way to truly know, though, and her mind wandered.

Her mind only returned from its journey when she noticed the reflection of another person approaching her table. Before Serena could turn to look, the other person spoke.

"Welcome! What can I get you?"

"Oh! Um, tea, please."

Serena turned her head. A waitress stood next to her table with a pad of paper and a pen at the ready.

"Chamomile, if you have it," Serena added. While the waitress wrote, Serena's eyes shifted to her attire. Aside from the white apron across her waist and the white buttoned shirt she wore with the sleeves rolled up, she was dressed in all black, even including the rims of her glasses and the beret on her head.

"Certainly," said the waitress. "Anything-"

Their eyes met. There was a pause.

"... else?" the waitress finished.

Serena stared for a second longer than she wanted, and she hurried to look away.

"No," she said, shaking her head and then pointedly looking away, out the window.

"Very good, then," said the waitress. She turned away.

When Serena heard the footsteps begin to fade, she turned and looked. From behind, she caught only a glimpse of the girl before she disappeared around a corner. But before she vanished, Serena wasn't sure of what she saw. She tried to convince herself that her eyes were deceiving her, that it was nothing more than a coincidence. Maybe it was nothing but a trick of the light, but she thought she had seen the girl's red hair drawn up into a tight bun.

A few minutes passed. Serena looked all around for any sign of the girl. It became harder and harder for her to remember what she had just seen. Was she imagining things? Had it happened at all? It didn't seem possible, and yet, her mind lingered on the thought.

Until another young woman approached the table with her cup of tea.

"Sorry for the delay," she said, placing the steaming saucer on the table in front of Serena. "Arielle was just taken sick and needed to leave."

Serena's heart skipped a beat.

That name.

"Oh. Okay, thank you."

The new waitress walked away. As soon as she was gone, Serena rummaged through her bag for all the loose change she could find, dumped it on the table, and ran out the door.

Outside again, she looked all around, frantic. There was no sign of the girl anywhere on the street. But then, it occurred to Serena that she had not seen her leave, at least not through the front door.

Serena ran to the end of the block and swerved around the corner. Narrowly avoiding a collision with a rather disapproving-looking woman, she took off toward the rear of the building. She came to an abrupt stop when she passed a narrow alley. She staggered to a halt and backed up. She looked down the alley. At the far end, she saw a figure in black and white.

"Hey! Wait!"

The figure disappeared around a corner.

The alley was too narrow to safely navigate, though. Serena planted her feet on the pedals again and pedaled as hard as she could. She had to make it all the way around the block before her target disappeared again.

Half a minute later, stumbling over several stray bottles and a displaced trash can lid, Serena emerged from the alley and came to a sudden halt on the sidewalk, stopping herself mere inches from the street. A car went zooming past, leaving her momentarily awash in a blast of warm air and tousled hair. She hurried to regain her composure, ignoring the strange looks she received from several bystanders.

Serena looked all around. Her target could not have gotten far. It had only been a few seconds, but somehow, the figure in black and white seemed to have vanished. Serena could not fathom how. The street was wide open, in broad daylight. There was nowhere to hide. Paranoid, she turned around expecting to see someone there. As ever, there was not.

With one hand grasping her forehead in exasperation and the other clutching the straps of her bags with white knuckles, Serena searched the street again. She remained at a total loss until she saw another person disappear.

A woman disappeared down an escalator, into a metro entrance.

Serena made a cursory glance toward the oncoming traffic and then ran out into it anyway, dashing between a pair of oncoming cars and receiving multiple honks from irritated drivers in the process. When she reached the other side of the road, she made a quick turn and swung her momentum around by gripping the escalator railing, almost falling down the escalator face-first in the process. When she regained her balance, she descended the escalator as fast as her feet would allow.

At the bottom, Serena came to another sudden stop. A small queue of people milled about, slowly progressing through the turnstiles to board the train, each of them tapping a metro pass to the scanner as they went through. Serena looked beyond the turnstiles and her heart lurched. The figure in black and white was up ahead, already through and heading for the platform.

Serena dug through her bag like mad as she entered the line, searching for her metro pass. It was in there somewhere, acquired on some outing with everyone the week before and now long forgotten at the bottom of her bag. She caught sight of a screen above the turnstiles. The next train was due to leave in one minute. The line advanced. She dug more frantically.

When she reached the front of the line a few seconds later, she still hadn't found her pass. For a moment, she considered hopping over the gate, but then caught sight of the guard just beyond it. Desperate, she held her entire bag up to the scanner. A moment later, the turnstile opened, and she ran through, earning a glance from the guard along the way.

Sprinting through the tunnel, Serena arrived at another escalator above the platform. Below, people were boarding the train. Among the masses, Serena saw her – the girl in black and white. Before Serena could get a good look, the girl slipped inside one of the cars on the far side of the platform. Serena squeezed through several stragglers on the escalator and dashed onto the platform. She was greeted by blinking hazard lights informing her that she was too late. The doors were about to close.

She shoved her hand into her bag and threw a Poké Ball toward the train.

"Pancham! Hold the door!"

Pancham burst out of the ball and materialized in the doorway of the last car of the train. A moment later, the doors began to close. Gritting his teeth, Pancham gripped the sliding doors and wedged himself between them, preventing them from closing.

The train began to move, sliding away from her. Serena pushed for one last burst of speed, then jumped. She leaped over Pancham and through the open door, slamming onto the floor of the train car. Pancham let go of the door and it snapped shut, just as the train left the platform and entered the dark tunnel beyond it.

After taking a few moments to regain her bearings and confirm that she was unharmed, Serena rose to her knees to catch her breath and saw the eyes of every person in the car staring at her. She gave everyone a nervous smile and then turned her attention to Pancham.

She thanked Pancham and returned him to his ball, then went to the door. Through the glass pane, she could see nothing but the faint darkness of nondescript concrete walls passing by on the outside and the reflection of everyone in the car keeping their distance from her on the inside. She was grateful for it. It would make it easier for her to observe at the next stop.

A minute or two later, the train slowed and then emerged into another illuminated underground chamber, coming to a stop at a platform. The doors opened, and Serena stepped one foot outside, her eyes glued to all the other doors. People embarked and disembarked, but there was no sign of the girl in black and white. The doors began to close, Serena stepped back inside, and the train continued to the next stop. And so the cycle repeated there, and at the next stop, and the one after that.

The train came to yet another stop. This time, as it pulled up to the platform, Serena felt like a fool for having her face pressed up against the door because she came face-to-face with an ocean of people waiting on the platform on the other side. When the door opened, chaos ensued. The giant crowd of people all hurried to board the train, blocking her view of the other cars.

The warning lights on the platform began to blink. The doors would close in only a few seconds. Serena wasn't sure what to do, convinced she had lost sight of her target.

And then she saw the girl in black and white ascending the escalator at the end of the platform.

Serena slipped out the door just as it closed behind her. She wanted to run for the escalator, but it was impossible. She could barely move. The station was far too crowded. She tried to weave her way between people to little avail, quickly losing sight of her target. A full minute passed before she made it to the escalator, and another two full minutes after that before she made it through the exit turnstiles and up the escalator to the street.

When she finally reached the surface again, Serena's chase came to a halt. She found herself paralyzed in a sea of humanity, with hundreds if not thousands of people obscuring her view in every direction. She looked up, and her jaw dropped. She was in the center of the city, in the plaza at the base of Prism Tower.

The girl in black and white was nowhere to be found.