Here's another chapter, and, as the previous ones have been doing, we'll be checking up on how another certain person is doing right now, on their first few days back at school!

Thunder Fire: Maybe, so far just Aidan. And maybe Marion, can't really be sure.

KedharS: She's a foodie now?

Hellraiserphoenix: I don't know if "foodie" is the right word as much as "glutton".

Aquahaze675: Rip. Nothing but pain. I think they could be cute together.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 467

Caelia stared up at the ceiling, the only world she could experience in the silence of her room. She kept her lights dim at night, just enough where she could still make out the world around her and still be able to fall asleep.

Sleep.

Sleep was the worst part.

Caelia hated sleeping, because her dreams…

Well, she didn't dream. Just blackness and emptiness and then waking up. A big part of that was the medication, of course. Specially prescribed due to her… condition.

Sleep did not come easily to Caelia Auburn. Closing her eye was like hell, erasing everything around her and leaving her with… nothingness. It was agony, without the pain. To be so isolated from everything around her… Caelia couldn't stand it, as empty as she might have been, being engulfed in that emptiness was unbearable.

Because of that, closing her eye, even to go to sleep, was something she couldn't stand. When she had explained the situation to her doctors in recovery all those years ago, they had been understanding, and prescribed Jiggly+, special pills that would put her to sleep without fail. It was the only way she could still function. They'd even gone the extra mile for her condition and provided them in a special bottle that wasn't one of those unscrew-tops, because Caelia would have never been able to open those in a million years. She reached over and turned her head, taking it from her night stand, and flipped the lid open, popping one into her hand. She swallowed it and set it back down on the nightstand, already feeling the drowsiness setting in.

Caelia leaned back and stared up at the ceiling again, ready for sleep to take hold of her. It always came before she realized it, before her world disappeared from her sight.

A knock on the door snapped her out of her daze. She glanced at it, but didn't make any moves to stand up and walk over to see who it was. Whoever it was, Caelia didn't really need them. She didn't need anyone after all.

That was just what she was. Empty. Unnecessary. The only things that mattered to her were her pokemon. She would keep going, keep her body breathing and her heart beating as long as they needed her care, even if she couldn't feel the breath filling her lungs, or the heart pounding in her chest. Caelia didn't matter. Only they mattered.

And Blake…

No. There was no point in thinking of him any further. Blake would not love her the way she wanted. She thought he could fill that emptiness inside of her… but that had just been a dream. Blake didn't care for her. No one did. How could anyone love someone empty and hollow inside like her? There was no point in pursuing her feelings.

The knocking wasn't stopping.

"Caelia! Caelia, it's me! Cynthia! Remember? Open up!"

Oh. Caelia vaguely remembered the redhead girl who had fought with her in the Winter Tag Tournament. She had convinced Caelia to fight for the sake of Blake, but in the end it hadn't mattered one bit. She had cut her ties with the girl without a second thought, what was she doing here? It didn't matter. Caelia wanted nothing more to do with her. Or with anyone, really.

"Caelia I know you're in there!" She still wasn't going away, her knocking was only growing louder and more insistent. "You don't do anything but sit in that mess of mold and rot you call a dorm room and feel gloomy about yourself, don't pretend like you aren't in there!"

Caelia stared up at the ceiling, studying the shadows on the molding cast by the dim light and waiting for her medication to kick in and drown out the annoying voice that wouldn't shut up and let her have some peace.

"…Fine, I'm coming in then," Cynthia declared. Caelia didn't know what she meant by that. She heard some rustling, and then a click. Then, to her surprise, she heard the sound of the door swinging open, light from the hall brightening her room.

"Oh, god! Ick!" Cynthia gasped, pinching her nose as she walked inside. Caelia sat up, finally, looking at the girl who had just broken into her room. She was mildly surprised, but it probably wasn't showing on her face. Her face was so damaged and her emotions were so numb that they seldom did. Even when she tried to smile it didn't really work.

"Did you not clean anything up before break?" Cynthia demanded, walking through the rubbish, taking care to walk only on the small sections of carpet she could see. Whatever was growing in her room, it was festering even stronger than it had been the last time she was there. "I know you said you don't feel anything, but did your sense of smell get damaged, too?"

Caelia didn't reply. She just stared blankly at the girl. There wasn't much point in picking up her things and cleaning up anyway. She just didn't care about cleanliness or anything like that. She didn't really care about-

"What's with that 'I don't really care' look on your face, huh?" Cynthia demanded, leaning in close to Caelia, scowling. "…Okay, yeah, sure, it's your normal face. But still, you really should care about stuff like this, you know?"

"No point," Caelia muttered. That just pissed Cynthia off more.

"Okay, that's it!" Cynthia scowled. She stormed out the door, slamming it behind her. Caelia blinked, leaned back down, and drifted off to her usual void of empty sleep.

When Caelia woke up, the world was brighter, as it always was in the mornings. She spent a few moments squinting up at the ceiling, waiting for her vision to clear up. There were still traces of sleep in her eye, and as the blurriness faded, she sat up, preparing for her day.

Caelia was mildly surprised by what she saw when she looked down at the floor. She turned and looked around, still not sure what was going on.

Her room was clean. It hadn't been this clean since she had moved in. There weren't any food containers littering the carpet, and her stained clothes were removed. Her textbooks and lose papers were stacked up on her desk, and the empty bottles were gone as well. Even the stains in the carpet had been mostly taken care of, with only slight patches of discoloration where the night before large dark splotches could be seen.

She couldn't even smell the odor of decay that used to pervade the room. It was odd. Had she gone to sleep in the wrong room? No, this was her room, that was certain. But her room wasn't supposed to look this clean and orderly.

Caelia's eye landed on the cause of her room's makeover, and it addressed the dull surprise she had been feeling.

Cynthia Fafnir was passed out on the floor, snoozing away like she didn't have a care in the world.

…

Well, that wasn't her concern. Caelia rolled out of bed (she'd had her bed specially made so that it was sitting right on the ground, to make it easier to get into. It was almost impossible for her to climb up into a bed with her body's condition) and stood up, looking around for her clothes. Normally, she would throw on whatever was around if what she was wearing was getting too crusty to move in, but apparently they were all gone.

It wasn't like she LIKED having to change clothing. It was annoying, really, and she wasn't dressing up for the sake of anyone else. And it's not like she could even FEEL it, but… she already didn't have the best control over her body, and if her clothes were starting to hamper her movements that meant it was time for a change.

But there was nothing to change into, hence the new conundrum.

"Your clothes?" Cynthia muttered from behind her. "Yeah, I did the best I could. Probably should have BURNED some of them, if I'm being honest. But yeah, they're clean, and MOSTLY stain free, you're welcome."

Caelia didn't thank her.

"You know," Cynthia continued, "you really should buy some new stuff. Your wardrobe is a little… lived in."

"Don't need it," Caelia muttered. "Where…?"

"Oh, right," Cynthia said, yawning, stretching her arms as she picked herself up from off the floor. "I hung your shirts and stuff up in the closet, the rest I just shoved into your dresser. Really tidies things up, don't you think?"

Caelia didn't care about "tidy" though. Her room needed to function, and, well… this wasn't.

Caelia walked over to her closet and slid it open. She reached for a thick sweater and pulled on it, but it wasn't coming off.

"No, you've gotta unhook it from the thing," Cynthia said. It was starting to dawn on her why Caelia didn't hang up her clothes. Caelia managed to get the clothes hanger off the rack, and then got to work on untangling her sweater from around the plastic. It wasn't an impossible task, of course, she could easily see HOW to do it. But it was an irritating one, another job that seemed mundane for others, but for her, was a major inconvenience.

Caelia finally got the sweater loose and stripped off the one she was wearing, tossing it over her shoulder and onto the carpet without a second thought. Cynthia winced, seeing Caelia's back from behind and the burns covering her flesh. It was an instinctual response, and she slapped herself for it, grateful that Caelia couldn't see her from this angle. If Cynthia could see Maddi's burns without it bothering her, then she could put up with Caelia's, right? Even if they were more severe than Maddi's burns.

She also noticed that Caelia wasn't wearing a bra. Obviously. When Cynthia had been doing her laundry, there wasn't a bra in sight. After all, if the girl had trouble with clothes hangers, there was no way she could work the clasp of a bra! But there was something else that she was concerned with, and it was sitting on the floor. Cynthia glanced at the shirt as Caelia looked into the mirror and pulled the sweater down over her head.

"Hey, Caelia, don't throw your laundry on the floor!" Cynthia huffed. She leaned over and picked up the tossed-aside shirt. "I tried really hard, you know? I spent all night cleaning this room, the least you could do is say thank you!"

"Didn't need it," Caelia muttered, dropping her sweatpants. At least she was wearing underwear, which she stripped too. Male boxers. Cynthia had noticed that Caelia really didn't have any concern for her appearance or comfort, did she? Caelia walked over to her dresser and dug out some more clothes, pulling them on.

"Okay, but your room will be just like it was before," Cynthia scowled, walking over and picking up the sweatpants and boxers. "I'm not a maid service, you know."

Cynthia went over and grabbed the hamper she had brought in, big and wide and perfect for holding all sorts of clothes. She reached up and rubbed the bridge of her nose, seeing that Caelia obviously didn't care at all about cleaning her laundry, or even putting it in the basket. That was something she would at least need to try to fix, for the slob of a girl's sake.

"Caelia. Caelia, look over here." Cynthia snapped her fingers to draw Caelia's attention to the wastebasket.

Caelia turned her head to look over at Cynthia.

"What?"

"Look, I can't MAKE you do your laundry," Cynthia admitted. Even though she wanted Caelia to take care of her stuff, she wasn't the girl's mother, and she couldn't live her life for her. But she could at least keep her living in only moderate squalor. "But if you're going to not wash your clothes anyway, can you at least leave them rotting in the hamper?"

To prove her point, Cynthia dropped the pants and boxers in the wicker basket.

Caelia stared at her with the same dead-eyed look in her eye. Cynthia glanced down. Caelia was still wearing crusty socks.

"Hamper. Now."

She pointed her finger at Caelia's feet. Caelia glanced down. She didn't really care one way or the other, but if it got Cynthia out of her room and gave her some privacy, it wasn't any big sacrifice to make, just some socks.

Caelia sat down on the floor and raised one of her legs, slowly sliding the sock off her ankle and foot, revealing the burns. Her leg was in decent condition, better than Maddi's leg, at least, her burns not even reaching all the way down. She did the same with the other, and then tossed both musty socks into the hamper.

"Good girl," Cynthia said, nodding.

Caelia stared at Cynthia from where she sat on the floor. She didn't have it in her to ask Cynthia to leave, so she just watched her, hoping that the girl would leave her alone now that she had put the socks in the hamper.

But Cynthia wasn't done.

"Put on some more socks, and then let's go," Cynthia declared. Caelia stared blankly up at her. She wasn't interested in going anywhere, and she didn't have to, either.

"No," Caelia said, shaking her head.

"You haven't eaten breakfast, right?" Cynthia reminded her, knowing full well that she hadn't. "We're going to get something to eat. Come on, get up. Let's get going."

Caelia didn't want to get up. She wasn't hungry, she was pretty much never hungry. And she didn't want to go out and eat, either.

Cynthia sighed. She had come here to invite Caelia to the birthday party she was throwing for herself this weekend, and also came in to check up on her to make sure that she was doing okay on her first few days back.

Clearly, Cynthia had been right to do so, because Caelia was obviously NOT okay, in several meanings of the word. Cynthia kind of thought of her as a friend, but at this point she was more like a child, or a pokemon, someone in need of serious care in order to get her to correct her behavior. But the biggest problem was that Caelia didn't want to help herself.

So Cynthia had to get creative. She walked over and threw a pair of socks over to Caelia from her dresser, narrowing her eyes and crossing her arms in front of her chest, her eyes insistent as she glared at the girl.

"We're going to eat. Then, after you're fed, I'll go, okay?"

Caelia gave the faintest hint of a nod, pulling her socks on. She stood up and slipped her shoes on, staring at Cynthia expectantly. Cynthia nodded. It was good enough. She was a little underdressed for the cold, but, well, Caelia hadn't let the cold bother her before. The two girls headed outside, Cynthia making sure to get the keys from Caelia to lock the door.

Cynthia and Caelia headed to the Snorlax Commons. Caelia reached for a to-go box. Cynthia pulled her hand away and shook her head.

"We're eating in the dining hall," she explained. She didn't want Caelia to get started on rebuilding the mountain of garbage she'd been working on before.

Caelia nodded. When she and Cynthia were fighting on the same team together, Cynthia had taken them to go eat in the dining hall multiple times, even though that wasn't what Caelia wanted to do, she didn't like eating around other people. Or being around other people in general, that's why she took classes online and ordered food from restaurants for delivery, to minimize human contact.

With that in mind, Caelia didn't really care that much about it. Concern for the thoughts of others was something that people who had purpose did. Caelia was empty inside, it didn't really matter either way where she ate her food. But what was puzzling her was why the hell Cynthia was so concerned with eating with her.

Breakfast today was a buffet of all sorts of things that probably looked delicious. Caelia could smell sizzling bacon and the sweet syrupy aroma of Kalos toast, as well as buttery pancakes. She didn't get any of those things, though. Because it didn't really matter. Her tastebuds, like every other part of her body, were completely senseless. The most juicy piece of bacon in the world would taste no differently to her than sand.

She got some eggs and a bowl of oatmeal. Enough to sustain her, at any rate. That was the whole point of food, after all.

"That's all you're getting?" Cynthia asked sympathetically.

"Enough," Caelia nodded. She stood there, tray in hand, staring at Cynthia with that empty eye of hers that made Cynthia feel bad for the poor girl.

Cynthia glanced at her own plate, feeling a little guilty about her indulgences. She'd had bacon and sausages to go with her eggs, and on the other plate she had Kalos toast slathered in enough syrup and butter to drown in.

"You don't want, maybe a little more?" She asked, not sure what to say to get Caelia to eat a little more. The girl was scrawny enough as it was, eggs and oatmeal wasn't enough. But she couldn't shove the food down her throat, even if Caelia probably wouldn't have cared.

"No."

Cynthia sighed. She turned and glanced wistfully at the mountain of pastries that she was about to pick clean, but she couldn't bring herself to do it seeing Caelia's starvation rations.

"Something to drink, at least?" She tried again.

Caelia nodded slightly. Cynthia got a glass of orange juice for the other girl, the healthiest thing she could get (milk, maybe, but the citrus in the orange juice was probably better considering Caelia's lack of concern for her own health) filling it as high as she could, before getting another glass for herself. Balancing both on her tray, she guided Caelia to a table for two in the corner, far away from any prying eyes in case Caelia would feel uncomfortable.

Maybe we should have gotten take-out, Cynthia admitted to herself. It might have made Caelia feel more comfortable eating in her room. But she didn't want Caelia to just be comfortable, she wanted the girl to take steps OUT of her comfort zone. Maybe open up eventually, even be comfortable enough to make friends, but that wasn't going to happen if she stayed cooped up in her room.

"Why did you have me come?" Caelia asked. It was the most words she'd said at once all morning, so Cynthia was a little surprised.

"I-I was worried about you," Cynthia admitted, moving the orange juice over onto Caelia's tray, taking a sip of her own. "You seem to be so alone in your room. I just wanted to, you know, make sure that you were doing okay."

"Not important," Caelia said. There wasn't any point in caring about her. And yet Cynthia kept trying, even though she didn't have any reason to. They weren't teammates anymore, so it wasn't like Cynthia had an obligation to spend time taking care of her.

"You're absolutely important!" Cynthia insisted, scowling. "Come on, Caelia. You should take better care of yourself, we've been over this before, right?"

"Breathing," Caelia coldly replied.

"…And that's really all you need?" Cynthia asked. She was stunned and a little hurt about how nonchalant Caelia seemed to be about her wellbeing. But, well… there wasn't really much she could do to make the girl feel better about herself and make her take care of herself, that was just the unfortunate truth.

Caelia opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, she was cut off by someone saying "Cynthia!"

Cynthia turned and went white in the face, staring at the last two people that they needed to see right now.

Blake and Ayame were walking up to their table, Blake waving in a good-natured way.

Cynthia felt her blood run cold.

A nice little breakfast with friends, that can only go well, right?