A few days had passed since the night Ash called Chloe, and things seemed to be proceeding as they had been before, with he and Goh heading off on adventures together, Chloe heading off to school and the three of them meeting briefly in the afternoons before Chloe went home. And during that time, Chloe's supposition proved correct: Ash hadn't as much hinted that he'd spoken to her, and so, neither had she.

'It's fun, keeping a secret like this' , she thought. 'Ash must have decided to talk to me about it since he didn't want to complain about it to Goh. That, and I'm really discerning, you know? I wouldn't just spill this stuff out. I'm trustworthy, and even Ash can see that!'

The thought of being trusted like this brought on a giggle and a smile, but she paid it no mind.

"Chloe? Are you paying attention?"

"Huh?"

Suddenly, she recalled where she was - at school. Looking away from the window she was daydreaming out of, her teacher stood at the podium staring back at her, eyes filled with a mix of disappointment and disbelief.

"Can you read the next section, please?"

Chloe looked down at the textbook. They were studying science, and her book was open to the chapter they were studying. "Uh…" She flipped through the pages in the chapter, the cold sweat forming on her forehead.

"Chloe doesn't even know where we are," taunted Yeardley, the boy who sat behind her. "She's off in space!"

"I-I am not," she said, turning in her seat, not willing to bring up just what - or who - she was thinking of in that moment of distraction. "I just…" She stopped, groaned and turned back around. She really had no excuse, letting her mind wander like that.

"Well, maybe a little extra homework in this area will help you," her teacher offered to the audible despair of the class. "Can I get a simple three paragraph essay about this chapter in your own words for class tomorrow? From everyone?"

Everyone in the class whined out loud except Chloe, who just put her head down on her book. As soon as the teacher had turned to write the assignment on the board, two wads of paper came flying in her direction, but thankfully missed their mark.

"Nice work, Chloe," Yeardley said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

She just sighed again as the bell rang, signaling the class change.

Sitting in the study above the laboratory proper, Chloe tapped her pencil against her notebook, leaving a few staccato marks on the page.

"Ugh, this is hopeless…" she said with a whine.

She looked again at the book, once more turned to the chapter in question that she daydreamed her way through. It wasn't even that long - only about 4 or 5 illustration riddled pages. But as she looked at the pages, she just had no desire to read the chapter like this.

"It's not fair," she complained to herself. "Just because no one wanted to say what page we're on, we get homework? What a crummy punishment…"

The books laid on the table, not giving her any response.

Chloe looked around the room for Yamper and Eevee. The two Pokémon were napping in the corner, curled up next to each other. 'So of course, I'm alone right now…' she thought, grumbling under her breath. If her previous groaning wasn't going to awaken them for companionship, then there was no way that anything short of shaking them awake would work. She would have to take more drastic measures.

Taking out her phone, she began scrolling through her contacts to find someone to talk to about this. She spied Goh's name on the list and paused. 'Knowing Goh, he'd have just as much to complain about school as I do. So…' She almost pressed his contact to call him. Almost. Then her thoughts turned to the conversation they would have, and the teasing he'd undoubtedly unload. She signed flopping against the sofa.

"He'd definitely point out that I got in trouble and rub it in my face," she sighed. "Not what I want to hear at all."

Picking her phone back up, she tried to look for someone else. She scrolled down the list and stopped at a certain name.

Ash Ketchum.

She paused. 'Would it be safe to call Ash? He's definitely in the park, so he could come right over here. And he does have some hidden depths to him; maybe he'd give me a fresh perspective on this. At least he wouldn't tease me for getting in trouble. We might even agree on this stuff. ' The more she thought about it, the more it sounded like a good idea. 'It wouldn't hurt to ask, at least.'

She tapped his name and set the phone to her ear.

After a few rings, Ash picked up. "H-Hey!" There was an audible awkwardness in his voice. "What's up?"

"Oh, I just wanted to know if you were free for a moment," she asked. "Y'know. I wanted to talk." There were a few sounds coming through the speaker that were decidedly not speech. They weren't unfamiliar, though; the crash of Sirfetch'd's leek against the ground and the distinctive call of Dracovish were making their way through. 'I guess he's still training them, ' she thought.

Ash didn't respond immediately, but the phone went silent, which Chloe thought was likely Ash covering the phone to give his Pokémon some command or another. After a short moment, he spoke up again, this time with confidence. "Yeah, I can do that. Where are you?"

"I'm in the study, upstairs."

"Got it! Be there in a sec!"

The phone call ended abruptly after that. She sighed and set the phone down and took another look at the books. This time she said nothing, only staring at the words on the page until she heard someone running up the stairs. The steps didn't stop until they were outside the door, which opened to Ash's grinning face. Pikachu was with him as well, riding his shoulder. "Pika, pika, Kakachu!" The mouse Pokémon greeted her with a wave.

"Hey, Chloe," Ash said. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to vent about this to someone," she said, gesturing to the books.

Ash looked at them, an uneasy chuckle escaping. "School, huh? What's got you mad about it?"

"Our teacher was totally unfair today!" she said. "I may have been daydreaming in class but because of that, everyone in the whole class got punished with extra homework! We have to write about the chapter we're going over in class, but it just seems so pointless! I can read it just fine! Having to rewrite what I just read is just punishment."

Ash took a seat not too far from Chloe. "Heh, yeah… school's no fun, usually. Guess I can't say much other than that since besides the Pokémon School in Alola and a few one-offs, I really haven't been in school since I started my journey."

"Your Pokémon Trainer's journey," Chloe said, filling in an unspoken gap. "When you left home with Pikachu."

He nodded, petting Pikachu who had taken a spot on the sofa. "It's gonna sound weird, but I've gotten by with just the school I had up until I left. I can read, write, do uh…" he paused to chuckle. "...do easy math. And that's usually been enough. Though I guess I have had some smart friends help me out along the way."

"I almost expected you to say something like you hated school and you were glad you didn't have to go anymore," Chloe admitted with a shrug. "Don't take it the wrong way, but you don't seem like you're the kind of person who'd ever enjoy school."

"Well, you're not totally wrong," he chuckled. "School was always just sort of boring to me. I can read about what something's like in a book, but that's a whole lot different than actually seeing it!"

She giggled, feeling at ease. "That figures. I feel like I've been the same, recently." She looked down at the books, but in her mind, she was looking out the window of her school, next to her seat. "There's just so much going on outside and most of the time we're inside learning from books. I know there's some stuff you can only learn from books, but I feel like we're too far the other way."

"Sounds like you wanna go on more trips with me and Goh, huh?"

She broke from her imagination. "Go with you guys more?"

"Yeah!" Ash said, pumping his fist. "You always look like you have so much fun when you come with us!"

"Pika! " he chimed in, agreeing.

She shrugs, leaning back into the sofa. "I mean… I do. It was a lot of fun looking for fossils and helping with all those Diglett. And of course I want to go see things with Eevee, too! " She sat up, shaking her head. "But I can't just stop going to school like you and Goh... "

Ash sat there looking at her for a moment before taking off his hat and scratching the back of his head. Looking at him, Chloe thought it looked like he was trying to consider his response carefully. "Well…" he said, finally shrugging. "I mean… why can't you? I mean, you shouldn't do anything you don't wanna, but what's stopping you?"

She climbed onto the sofa, looking to the corner as her knees dug into the cushion. Eevee and Yamper were still sleeping, and she pointed at the Normal-Type, still curled up next to Yamper, sleeping. "This might sound a little… I dunno, silly, but I guess I see a lot of me in Eevee."

"You see yourself in Eevee…?" Ash asked, blinking as Pikachu crawled to the top of his head to get a better view.

"Yeah," she said. "Eevee's still trying to decide what she wants her future to look like, and so am I. And like I want Eevee to take her time and consider what it is she really wants to become, I'm taking my time to decide what it is that I want to do. So I want to keep learning things in school, but I also want to learn about things away from it. I want to learn as much as I can."

Ash nodded. "Right! You mentioned your dream before! I guess I just didn't connect the two, you know?" Looking at the napping Pokémon, he smiled. "Sorry about Yamper not bein' up to greet you today. When I took him for his walk, he was runnin' all over the place! It was hard t' even keep up with him…"

She giggled, turning around back in her seat. "Well, thank you very much for taking him. I know he can get fussy when he doesn't get to go on a walk. I remember when poor Ren had to handle it all the time…" Giggling at the memory of poor Ren returning exhausted, she turned her attention back to the thoughtful boy. "And thank you for asking about it. Lots of people just make assumptions about how they think I should be."

He gave that wide, toothy, somewhat wild looking grin. "Hey, no prob, Chloe! That's what friends are for, right?"

'We're friends-?' The thought gave Chloe pause. She looked at the smiling boy sitting close to her, and the warmth in his brown eyes told her the truth. She slunk back into the sofa. "Right! Thanks for being my friend." She took a moment to reflect on that, her growing friendship with Ash when a question for him came to mind. "Hey, do you mind if I ask you something?"

"Sure, go ahead!"

"What was Pokémon School like?"

His brown eyes lit up. "Pokémon School is amazing!" he said, bolting upright with Pikachu mimicking his pose on his shoulder. "The people there are so nice and there's Pokémon all over, even in the classrooms!"

"Pokémon in the classroom?" Chloe was hesitant. "Doesn't it get cramped…? Or dangerous with all of them in there?"

Ash chuckled. "Well, we did have a pretty small class, I guess. Only six of us; me, Lillie, Kiawe, Lana, Mallow, and Sophocles. So there was plenty of room for Pokémon. I even had a Rotom Pokédex with me, so it wasn't just Pikachu or any of the Pokémon I caught in the Alola Region! Towards the end of my stay there with everyone's Pokémon in the classroom, it was really busy!"

"So you all learned about Pokémon in class?" she asked.

"Well, yeah," he said, still reminiscing. "Not all the time. Sometimes we did stuff I'm sure you do. Learn about math and science and stuff. Professor Kukui said it was because if we understood the world better, it would help us understand our Pokémon better!"

"Oh, that's like what my dad says," Chloe said, leaning forward with interest. "'To know Pokémon is to know the world, and that's how we make it a better world for everyone'."

Ash laughed at her impression. "That sounds JUST like him," he said between snickers. "But it's true, you know? The more I learned about Alola, the more I felt connected to it, and the more connected to it I felt, the more I connected with my Pokémon and the stronger we got. Right, buddy?"

Pikachu pumped his own tiny fist like a miniature Ash, a look of strength on confidence on his small face. "Piiika, pika, pikapi."

"You'd have really liked the Pokémon School, Chloe," he said. "Hopefully the next time Goh and I go there, you can come, too! Then you could meet Professor Kukui and Burnett and their son Lei… and we could all eat at Mallow's family's restaurant! It'd be a great time!"

She laughed. "Well, maybe I'll have to ask my teacher if I can go with you guys more often…!"

"If there's anything I can do t' help, just leave it to me!" Ash responded excitedly before he seemed to realize exactly what he was signing up for. He backed down and laughed at himself. "Just uh… maybe not anything too schooly."

There was something charming about the way he folded under even the suggestion of the more rigorous academia. "Normally you're so confident… It's funny to see a different side of you like this. I guess not even you're good at everything."

Ash pouted, leaning back. "It's not that funny…"

Pikachu snickered from his perch on Ash's shoulder.

"Well, funny's the wrong word," she said, still laughing a little at him. "It's… fun. Normally you're always so pumped up and full of energy doing all sorts of things. But now, it's like I'm seeing a whole new Ash, you know?"

Ash thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, I can see that," he said, nodding. "It's kinda like how you're different now."

"I'm different…?" her pitch raised in surprise as she felt a hint of embarrassment creep onto her face.

"Yeah! You used to be pretty cold!"

And that embarrassment went away immediately. "'Cold'? What do you mean 'cold'?" she asked with an accusatory tone, pouting with puffed cheeks and pursed lips.

"Now it's your turn," he said, holding back his laughter. "But I mean it. Remember the first time we met? You just kinda just left me there with Pikachu on the steps."

"O-Oh…" A very different emotion shot through her chest. Shame. It felt sharp, and Chloe hung her head down. "O-Oh… I… guess I never… apologized for that."

He shook his head. "It's no big deal," he said. "We didn't exactly know each other that well, and since then, we've gotten a lot closer, you know? You warmed up to me."

Chloe shrugged, looking back at the books. The shame was mixed with another, much lighter feeling. One she didn't quite understand the origin of yet. "I mean… I suppose I am less grouchy than before," she said, not making eye contact. "I guess you and Goh really showed me just how amazing Pokémon can be and since then… I've started looking at everything a bit differently."

Ash nodded. "I think I really started to notice it after you met Eevee. You really invested yourself into helping her out, and when she wanted to do something, you helped her with it! Like when we went to Galar looking for fossils, or when she wanted to meet Vaporeon!"

She shook her head before finally looking back at him.. "Honestly, it feels a little selfish. I just want Eevee to have it better than I did, with everyone piling on me to figure out what I was going to do right then and there."

"You really love Eevee, don't you?" Ash said, taking Pikachu off his shoulder and holding him in his lap. He smiled widely at her, his brown eyes looking directly back at her green eyes. "You're not selfish at all! You're amazing, Chloe!"

That feeling came back, light and feathery, and hard to grasp. She turned her head back to the books again. "I uh… thanks, Ash."

"Keep it up and I'm sure you and Eevee won't have anything to worry about," he said. "You think so, too, right buddy?"

"Pikapika!"

"Yamp! Yamp! "

"Eievui! "

Chloe and Ash both looked up, first at each other and then at the sounds of Yamper and Eevee scampering around the sofa before hopping up onto it next to Chloe. Immediately, her hands went to petting the two small, friendly Pokémon. "Did you two have a good nap?"

"Yamp! " he answered for them both.

Ash nodded and stood up. "Well, I guess I better let you get back to work," he said. "But this was fun! Thanks for callin' me up here, Chloe."

"Hey, thank you for listening to me rant about school for a bit," she said, smiling back at him. "I'll… talk to you again soon, okay?"

He nodded and gave her a thumbs up. "You've got it! Later, Chloe! C'mon, Pikachu!" Beckoning the mouse back to his shoulder, he turned and adjusted his hat on his head before rushing out of the room and, if the sounds were believed, back down the stairs as well.

Giggling to herself, she pulled the book into her lap, which Eevee and Yamper both immediately pawed at until she sat it down flat so they could see, too. "I honestly feel pretty recharged. I can knock this assignment out, no problem."

She closed her eyes for a moment, and she saw Ash staring back at her, smiling. For a moment, it's like the words echoed in her ears. 'You're amazing, Chloe!' And with a giggle, she began to focus on the reading.

"There you are! I've been looking for you! I almost called!" Goh stood in the middle of Cerise Park, arms crossed. "Where'd you disappear to? One second, you're over here training and then the next you're just up and gone. Where'd you go?"

Ash shrugged. "I just went for a break, that's all," he said, not thinking much of it.

"A pretty long break," Goh said, not really convinced, his body language not changing one bit. "Are you feeling alright?"

He laughed and stretched. "Honestly? I feel really great! I think that was just what I needed!" He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted out. "Hey! Dragonite, Gengar, Lucario, Sirfetch'd, Dracovish! C'mon, let's run!" Turning to his partner Pokémon on his shoulder, he nodded, saying "You, too, buddy!" After that, he took off into the park, meeting up with and then leading his Pokémon in the athletic activity.

Goh kept watching, but relaxed. "I mean… I can't say that's any different than you usually are. But I can't help but think there's something else going on around here. That means it's time for research."

Unsure of what exactly he was in for, Goh took a few steps back and decided to observe Ash for hints as to what was happening to his best friend.